ii: 



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SCOTT 

THE LADY | 

OF 
MOODY 



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Hi" 









CMss JfJiiLli) 8 
Book lAJ 



10 



113 



CCEXRIGKT DEPOSm 



General Editor 

LINDSAY TODD DAMON, A.B. 

Professor of English in BroM'n University 



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SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY 

CHICAGO : 623 S. Wabash Ave. NE # YORK : 8 East 34th Street 



tirtc Hafee Cngligfi Classics 



REVISED EDITION WITH HELPS TO STUDY 



THE 

LADY OF THE LAKE 



BY 

SIR WALTER SCOTT 



EDITED FOR S( HOOL USE 
BY ' 

WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY 

SOMETIME ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH 
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO 



SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY 
CHICAGO NEW YORK 






t^t^^ 



A.A 



V 



Copyright 1899, 1919 
By Scott, Foresmaj^ an^d Company 



ROBERT O. LAW COMPANY 

EDITION BOOK MANUFACTURERS 
CHICAGO. U. S.A. 

MAy Ii3 I9I9©CI.A5^554 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Map 6 

Introduction 

I. Life of Scott 9 

II. Scott's Place in the Eomantic Movement 39 
III. The Lady of the Lake ^ 

Historical Setting .... 46 

General Criticism and Analysis . . 48 

Text 59 

Notes . 251 

Appendix 

Helps to Study . . . . . .265 

. Theme Subjects 269 

Selections for Class Reading .... 270 

Classes of Poetry „ 271 



I LIFE OF SCOTT 



Walter Scott was born in Edinburgh, August 15, 
1771, of an ancient Scotch clan numbering in its 
time many a hard rider and good fighter, and 
more than one of these petty chieftains, half -shep- 
herd and half -robber, who made good the winter 
inroads into their stock of beeves by spring forays 
and cattle drives across the English Border. 
Scott's great-grandfather was the famous '^Beardie'* 
of Harden, so called because after the exile of the 
Stuart sovereigns he swore never to cut his beard 
until they were reinstated; and several degrees 
farther back he could point to. a still more famous 
figure, '^Auld Wat of Harden," who with his fair 
dame, the Flower of Yarrow, is mentioned in The 
Lay of the Last Minstrel. The first memxber of 
the clan to abandon country life and take up a 
sedentaiw profession, was Scott's father, w^ho 
settled in Edinburgh as Writer to the Signet, a 
position corresponding in Scotland to that of 
attorney or solicitor in England. The character of 
this father, stern, scrupulous, Calvinistic, with a 
high sense of ceremonial dignity and a punctilious 
regard for the honorable conventions of life, united 
with the wilder ancestral strain to make Scott what 

9 



10 INTRODUCTION 

he was. From ^^Aiild Wat" and "Beardie" came his 
higb spirit, his rugged manliness, his chiyalric 
ideals ; from the Writer to the Signet came that 
power of methodical labor which made him a giant 
among the literary workers of his daj^, and that 
delicate sense of responsibility which gave his 
private life its remarkable sweetness and beauty. 

At the age of eighteen months, Scott was seized 
with a teething fever which settled in his right leg 
and retarded its growth to such an extent that he 
was slightly lame for the rest of his life. Possibly 
this affliction was a blessing in disguise, since it is 
not improbable that Scott's love of active adventure 
would have led him into the army or the navy, if 
he had not been deterred by a bodily impediment ; 
in which case English history might have been a 
gainer, but English literature would certainly have 
been immeasurably a loser. In spite of his lameness, 
the child grew strong enough to be sent on a long 
visit to his grandfather's farm at Sandy knowe; 
and here, lying among the sheep on the windy 
downs, playing about the romantic ruins of Smail- 
holm Tower/ scampering through the heather on 
a tiny Shetland pony, or listening to stories of the 
thrillhig past told by the ola women of the farm, 
he drank in sensations which strengthened both 
the hardiness and the romanticism of his nature. 
A s'iory is told of his being found in the fields 
during a thunder storm, clapping his hands at each 

'See Scott's ballad Tlie Eve (?f St. John^ 



LIFE OF SCOTT li 

flash of lightning, and shouting ^' Bonny f Bonny!" 
■ — a bit of infantile intrepidity which makes more 
acceptable a story of another sort illustrative of his 
mental precocity, A lady entering his mother's 
room, found him reading aloud a description of a 
shipwreck, accompanying the words with excited 
comments and gestures. ''There's the mast 
gone," he cried, ''crash it goes; they will all 
perish!" The lady entered into his agitation with 
tact, and on her departure, he told his mother 
that he liked their visitor, because ''she was a 
virtuoso, like himself." To her amused inquiry 
as to what a virtuoso might be, he replied: 
"Don't ye know? why, 'tis one who wishes to £^\d 
will know everything." 

As a boy at school in Edinburgh and in Kelso, 
and afterwards as a student at the University and 
apprentice in his father's law oflBce, Scott took his 
own way to become a "virtuoso"; a rather queer 
way it must sometimes have seemed to his good 
preceptors. He refused point-blank to learn 
Greek, and cared little for Latin. His scholarship 
was so erratic that he glanced meteor -like from 
the head to the foot of his classes and back again, 
according as luck gave or withheld the question to 
which his highly selective memory had retained the 
answer. But outside of school hours he was 
intensely at work to "know everything, " so fa.r as 
"everything" came v/ithin the bounds of his 
special tastes. Before he was ten vears old he had 



12 INIKODUCTIOI^^ 

begun to collect chap-books and ballads. As lie 
grew older he read omniyoronsly in romance and 
history; at school he learned French for the sole 
purpose of knowing at jBrst hand the fascinating 
cycles of old French romance; a little later he 
mastered Italian in order to read Dante and 
Ariosto, and to his schoolmaster's indignation 
stoutly championed the claim of the latter poet to 
superiority over Homer ; a little later he acquired 
Spanish and read Don Quixote in the original. 
With such efforts, however, considerable as they 
were for a boy who passionately loved a *' bicker" 
in the streets, and who was famed among his 
connades for bravery in climbing the perilous 
* 'kittle nine stanes" on Castle Eock, — ^he was not 
content. Nothing more conclusively shows the 
genuineness of Scott's romantic feeling than hie 
willingness to undergo severe mental drudgery in 
pursuit of knowledge concerning the old storied 
days which had enthralled his imagination. It was 
no moonshine sentimentality which kept him hour 
after hour and day after day in the Advocate's 
Library, poring over musty manuscripts, decipher- 
ing heraldic devices, tracing genealogies, and 
unraveling obscure points of Scottish history. By 
the time he was twenty -one he had made himself, 
almost unconsciously, an expert paleographer and 
antiquarian, whose assistance was sought by pro- 
fessional workers in those branches of knowledge. 
Carlyle has charged against Scott that he poured 



LIFE OF SCOTT 13 

out his vast floods of poetry and romance withoat 
preparation or forethought; that his production 
was always impromptu, and rooted in no sufficient 
past of acquisition. The charge cannot stand. 
From his earliest boyhood until his thirtieth year, 
when he began his brilliant career as poet and 
novelist, his life was one long preparation, — ^very 
individual and erratic preparation, perhaps, but 
none the less earnest and fruitful. 

In 1792, Scott, then twenty-one years old, was 
admitted a member of the faculty of advocates of 
Edinburgh. During the five years which elapsed 
between this date and his marriage, his life was full 
to overflowing of fun and adventure, rich with genial 
companionship, and with experience of human 
nature in all its wild and tame varieties . Ostensibly 
he was a student of law, and he did, indeed, devote 
some serious attention to the mastery of his pro- 
fession. But the dry formalities of legal life his 
keen humor would not allow him to take quite 
seriously. On the day when he v/as called to the 
bar, while waiting his turn among the other young 
advocates, he turned to his friend, William Clark^ 
who had been called with him, and whispered, 
mimicking the Highland lasses v/ho used to stand at 
the Cross of Edinburgh to be hired for the 
harvest: '^ We've stood here an hour by the Tron, 
liinny, and deil a ane has speered^ our price." 
Though Scott never made a legal re-nutation, either 

'~*AskeZ 



14 INTRODUCTION 

as pleader at the bar or as an authority upon legal 
history and principles, it cannot be doubted that 
his experience in the Edinburgh courts was of 
immense benefit to him. In the first place, his 
study of the Scotch statutes, statutes which had 
taken form very gradually under the pressure of 
changing national conditions, gave him an insight 
into the politics and society of the past not other- 
wise to have been obtained. Of still more value, 
perhaps, was the association with his young com- 
panions in the profession, and daily contact' 
with the racy personalities which traditionally 
haunt all courts of law, and particularly Scotch 
courts of law: the first association kept him from 
the affectation and sentimentality which is the 
bane of the youthful romanticist ; and the second 
enriched his memory with many an odd figure after- 
ward to take its place, clothed in the colors of a 
great dramatic imagination, upon the stage of his 
stories. 

Added to these experiences, there were others 
equally calculated to enlarge his conception of 
human nature. Not the least among these he found 
in the brilliant literary and artistic society of 
Edinburgh, to which his mother's social position 
gave him entrance. Here, when only a lad, he 
met Eobert Burns, then the pet and idol of 
the fashionable coteries of the capital. Here he 
heard Henry Mackenzie deliver a lecture on Ger- 
man literature which turned his attention to the 



LIFE OF SCOTT W 

romantic poetry of Germany and led directly to his 
first attempts at ballad- \\Titing. But much more 
vital than any or all of these influences, were those 
endless walking-tours which alone or in company 
with a boon companion he took over the neighbor- 
ing country-side, — care-free, roystering expeditions, 
which he afterwards immortalized as Dandie 
Dinmont's "Liddesdale raids" in Guy Manner- 
ing. Thirty miles across country as the crov/ flies, 
with no objective point and no errand, a village 
inn or a shepherd's hut at night, with a crone to 
sing them an old ballad over the fire, or a group 
of hardy dalesmen to welcome them with stories 
and carousal, — these were blithe adventurous days 
such as could not fail to ripen Scott's already 
ardent nature, and store his memory with genial 
knowledge. The account of Dandie Dinmont 
given by Mr. Shortreed may be taken as a picture, 
only too true in some of its touches, of Scott in 
these youthful escapades: ''Eh me, . . sic an 
endless fund of humour and drollery as he had 
then wi' him. ^ever ten yaj^ but we were either 
laughing or roaring and singing. Wherever we 
stopped how brawlie he suited himsel'to every- 
body! He aye did as the lave did; never made 
himsel' the great man or took ony airs in the com- 
pany. I've seen him in a' moods in these jaunts, 
grave and gay, daft and serious, sober and di'unk 
— (this, however, even in our wildest rambles, was 
but rare) — but drunk or sober, he was aye the 



16 IlSTRODUCTIOJSr 

gentleman. He looked excessively heavy and 
stupid when he was fon, but he w^as never out o* 
gnde humour." After this, we are not surprisec* 
to hear that Scott's father told him disgustedlj 
that he was better fitted to be a fiddling pedlar, a 
'''gangrel scrape-gut,'' than a respectable attorney. 
As a matter of fact, however, behind the mad 
pranks and the occasional excesses there was a very 
serious purpose in all this scouring of the country- 
side. Scott was picking up here and there, from 
the old men and women with whom he hobnobbed, 
antiquarian material of an invaluable kind, bita 
of local history, immemorial traditions and super- 
stitions, and, above all, precious ballads which had 
been handed down for generations among the 
peasantr}. These ballads, thus precariously trans- 
mitted, it was Scott's ambition to gather together 
and preserve, and he spared no pains or fatigue to 
come at any scrap of ballad literature of v/hose 
existence he had an inkling. Meanwhile, he was 
enriching heart and imagination for the work that 
was before him. So that here also, though in the 
hair-brained and heady v/ay of youth, he was 
engaged in his task of preparation. 

Scott has told us that it was his reading of Don 
Quixote which determined him to be an author > 
but he was first actually excited to composition in 
another way. This was by hearing recited a ballad 
of the German poet Biirger, entitled Lenore^ in 
which a skeleton lo^er canies off his bride to a 



LIFE OF SCOTT 17 

wedding in the land of death. Mr. Hiitton 
remarks upon the curioiisness of the fact that a 
piece of '*raw super naturalism" like this should 
have appealed so strongly to a mind as healthy and 
sane as Scott's. So it was, however. He could 
not rid himself of the fascination of the piece until 
he had translated it, and published it, together 
with another translation from the same author. 
One stanza at least of this first effort of Scott 
sounds a note characteristic of his poetry : 

Tramp ! tramp ! along the land they rode, 
Splash ! splash ! along the sea ; 
The scourge is red, the spur drops blood, 
The flashing pebbles flee. 

Here we catch the trumpet-like clang and staccato 
tramp of verse which he was soon to use in a way 
to thrill his generation. This tiny pamphlet of 
verse, Scott's earliest publication, appeared in 1796, 
Soon after, he met Monk Lev/is, then famous as a 
purveyor to English palates of the crude horrors 
which German romanticism had just ceased to 
revel in. Lewis was engaged in compiling a book 
of supernatural stories and poems under the title 
of Tctles of Wonder^ and asked Scott to contribute. 
Scott wrote for this book three long ballads — - 
Glenfinlas^ Cadyow Castle^ and The Gray Brother. 
Though tainted with the conventional diction of 
eighteenth century verse, these ballads are not un- 
impressive pieces of work; the second named, 
especially, shows a kind and degree of romantic 



18 INTRODUCTION 

imagination snch as his later poetry rather sub* 
stantiated than newly revealed. 

II 

Tn the following year, 1797, Scott married a Miss 
Charpentier, daughter of a French refugee. She 
was not his first love, that place having been 
':isurped by a Miss Stuart Belches, for whom Scott 
had felt perhaps tli^ only deep passion of his life, 
and memory of whom was to come to the surface 
fcouchingiy in his old age. Miss Charpentier, or 
Carpenter, as she was called, with her vivacity and 
quaint foreign speech ''caught his heart on the re- 
bound;" there can be no doubt that, in spite of a 
certain shallowness of character, she made him a 
good wife, and that his affection for her deepened 
steadily to the end. The young couple went to 
live at Lasswade, a village near Edinburgh, on the 
Esk. Scott, in whom the proprietary instinct was 
always very strong, took great pride in the pretty 
little cottage. He made a dining-table for it with 
his own hands, planted saplings in the yard, and 
drew together two willow -trees at the gate into a 
kind of arch, surmounted by a cross made of two 
sticks. "After I -had constructed this," he 
says, *'mamma (Mrs. Scott) and I both of us 
thought it so fine that we turned out to see it by 
moonlight, and walked backwards from it to the 
cottage door, in admiration of our manriificence and 
its picturesque effect." It would ijavf, ^»eeu weil 



LIFE OF SCOTT 19 

indeed for them both if their pleasures of proprie- 
torship could always have remained so touchingly 
simple. 

Now that he was married, Scott was forced to 
look a little more sharply to his fortunes. He 
applied himself with more determination to the 
law. In 1799 he became deputy-sheriff of Selkirk- 
shire, with a salary of three hundred pounds, which 
placed him at least beyond the reach of want. He 
began to look more and more to literature as a 
means of supplementing his income. His ballads 
in the Tales of Wonder had gained him some 
reputation; this he increased in 1802 by the 
publication, under the title Border Minstrelsy^ of 
the ballads which he had for several years been 
collecting, collating, and richly annotating. 
Meanvv^hile, he was looking about for a congenial 
subject upon which to try his hand in a larger way 
than he had as yet adventured. Such a subject 
came to him at last in a manner calculated to 
enlist all his enthusiasm in its treatment, for it 
was given him by the Countess of Dalkeith, wife 
of the heir-apparent to the dukedom of Buccleugh. 
The ducal house of Buccleugh stood at the head of 
the clan Scott, and toward its representative the 
poet always held himself in an attitude of feudal 
reverence. The Duke of Buccleugh was his 
*' chief," entitled to demand from him both passive 
loyalty and active service; so, at least, Scott loved 
to interpret their relationship, making effective in 



20 INTRODUCTION 

his own case a feudal sentiment which had else- 
where somewhat lapsed. He especially loved to 
think of himself as the bard of his clan, a modern 
representative of those rude poets whom the Scott- 
ish chiefs once kept as a part of their household to 
chant the exploits of the clan. Nothing could 
have pleased his fancy more, therefore, than a 
request on the part of the lady of his chief to treat 
a subject of her assigning, namely, the dark mis- 
chief-making of a dwarf or goblin who had strayed 
from his unearthly master and attached himself as 
page to a human household. The subject fell in 
with the poet's reigning taste for strong super- 
naturalism. Gilpin Horner, the goblin page, 
though he proved in the sequel a difficult character 
to put to poetic uses, was a figure grotesque and 
eerie enough to appeal even to Monk Lewis. At 
first Scott thought of treating the subject in 
ballad-form, but the scope of treatment wag 
gradually enlarged by several circumstances. To 
begin v/ith, he chanced upon a copy of Goethe's 
Gotz von BerUcMngen^ and the history of that rob- 
ber baron suggested to him the feasibility of throw- 
ing the same vivid light upon the old Border life of 
his ancestors as Goethe had thrown upon that of the 
Rhine barons. This led him to subordinate the 
part played by the goblin page in the proposed 
story, which was now widened to include elaborate 
pictures of medieeval life and manners, and to lay 
the scene in the castle of Branksome, formerly the 



LIFE OF SCOTT 2i 

stronghold of Scott's and the Duke of Buccleugh's 
ancestors. The verse form into which the story 
was thrown was due to a still more accidental 
circumstance, i. e., Scott's overhearing Sir John 
Stoddard recite a fragment of Coleridge's unpub- 
lished poem Christabel. The placing of the 
story in the mouth of an old harper fallen upon 
evil days, was a happy afterthought; besides 
making a beautiful framework for the main poem, 
it enabled the author to escape criticism for any 
violent innovations of style, since these could 
always be attributed to the rude and wild school 
of poetry to which the harper was supposed to 
belong. In these ways The Lay of the Last Min- 
strel gradually developed in its present form. 
Upon its publication in 1805, it achieved ?.n 
immediate success. The vividness of its descriptive 
passages, the buoyant rush of its metre, the deep 
romantic glow suffusing all its pages, took by 
storm a public familiar to weariness with the 
decorous abstractions of the eighteenth century 
poets. The first edition, a sumptuous quarto, was 
exhausted in a few weeks; an octavo edition of 
fifteen hundred was sold out within the year ; and 
before 1830, forty-four thousand copies were 
needed to supply the popular demand. Scott 
received in all something under eight hundred 
pounds for the Lay^ a small amount when con- 
trasted with his gains from subsequent poems, but 
a sum so unusual nevertheless that he determined 



22 INTRODUCTION 

forthwith to devote as much time to literature as 
he could spare from his legal duties ; those he still 
placed foremost, for until near the close of his life 
he clung to his adage that literature was ''a good 
staff, but a poor crutch. " 

A year before the publication of the Loy^ Scott 
had removed to the small country seat of Ashestiel, 
in Selkirkshire, seven miles from the nearest town, 
Selkirk, and several miles from any neighbor. In 
the introductions to the various cantos of Marmion 
he has given us a delightful picture of Ashestiel 
and its surroundings,— the swift Glenkinnon dash- 
ing through the estate in a deep ravine, on its way 
to join the Tweed; behind the house the rising 
hills beyond which lay the lovely scenery of the 
Yarrow. The eight years (1804-1812) at Ashestiel 
were the serenest, and probably the happiest, of 
Scott's life. Here he wrote his two greatest poems, 
Marmion and Tlie Lady of the Lahe, His mornings 
he spent at his desk, always with a faithful hound 
at his feet watching the tireless hand as it threw off 
sheet after sheet of manuscript to make up the 
day's stint. By one o'clock he was, as he said, 
''his own man, " free to spend the remaining hours 
of light with his children, his horses, and his dogs, 
or to indulge himself in his life-long passion for 
tree-planting. His robust and healthy nature 
made him excessively fond of ail out-of-door sports, 
perennially riding, in which he was daring to fool- 
hardiness. It is a curious fact, noted by LockharL 



LIFE OF SCOTT 2h 

that many of Scott's senses were blunt; he could 
scarcely, for instance, tell one wine from another 
by the taste, and once sat quite unconscious at his 
table while his guests were manifesting extreme 
uneasiness over the approach of a too-long-kept 
haunch of yenison, but his sight was unusually 
keen, as his hunting exploits proved. His little 
son once explained his father's popularity by saying 
that ''it was him that commonly saw the hare 
sitting." What with hunting, fishing, salmon- 
spearing by torchlight, gallops over the hills into 
the Yarrow country, planting and transplanting of 
his beloved trees, Scott's life at Ashestiel, during 
the hours when he was ''his own man," was a very 
full and happy one. 

Unfortunately, he had already embarked in an 
enterprise which was destined to overthrow his 
fortunes just when they seemed fairest. While at 
school in Kelso he had become intimate with a 
school fellow named James Ballantyne, and later, 
when Ballantyne set up a small printing house in 
Kelso, he had given him his earliest poems to 
print. After the issue of the Border Mi7istrelsyj 
the typographical excellence of which attracted 
attention even in London, he set Ballantyne up in 
business in Edinburgh, secretly entering the firm 
himself as silent partner. The good sale of the 
Lay had given the firm an excellent start; but 
more matter was presently needed to feed the press. 
To supply it, Scott undertook and completed ai 



24 INTRODUCTIOIS 

Ashestiel four enormous tasks of editing, — the 
complete work^ of Dry den and of Swift, the 
Somers' Tracts, and the Sadler State Papers. The 
success of these editions, and the subsequent 
enormous sale of Scott's poems and novels, would 
have kept the concern solvent in spite of Bal- 
lantyne's complete incapacity for business, but in 
1809 Scott plunged recklessly into another and 
more serious venture. A dispute with Constable, 
the veteran publisher and bookseller, aggravated 
by the harsh criticism delivered upon Marmion by 
Francis Jeffrey, editor of the Edinburgh Review^ 
Constable's magazine, determined Scott to set up 
in connection with the Ballantyne press a rival 
bookselling concern, and a rival magazine, to be 
called the Quarterly Review, The project was a 
daring one, in view of Constable's great ability 
and resources; to make it foolhardy to madness 
Scott selected to manage the new business a brother 
of James Ballantyne, a dissipated little buffoon, with 
about as much business ability and general calibre 
of character as is connoted by the name which 
Scott coined for him, ''Eigdumfunnidos." The 
selection of such a man for such a place betrays 
in Scott's eminently sane and balanced mind a 
cm'ious strain of impracticality, to say the least; 
indeed, we are almost constrained to feel with his 
harsher critics that it betrays something worse than 
defective judgment, — defective character. His 
greatest failing, ii failing it can be called, was 



LIFE OF SCOTT 25 

pride. He could not endure even the mild 
dictations of a competent publisher, as is shown 
by his answer to a letter written by one of them 
proposing some salaried work; he replied curtly 
that he was a ''black Hussar" of literature, and 
not to be put to such tame service. Probably this 
haughty dislike of dictation, this imperious desire 
to patronize rather than be patronized, led him to 
choose inferior men with whom to enter into 
business relations. If so, he paid for the fault so 
dearly that it is hard for a biographer to press the 
issue against him. 

For the present, however, the wind of fortune 
was blowing fair, and all the storm clouds were 
below the horizon. In 1808 Marmion appeared, 
and was greeted with an enthusiasm which made 
the unprecedented reception of the Lay seem luke- 
warm in comparison. Marjuion contains nothing 
which was not plainly foreshadowed in the Lay^ 
but the hand of the poet has grown more sure, his 
descriptive effects are less crude and amateurish, 
the narrative proceeds with a steadier march, the 
music has gained in volume and in martial vigor. 
An anecdote is told by Mr. Hutton which will 
serve as a type of a hundred others illustrative of 
the extraordinary hold which this poetry took upon 
the minds of ordinary men. ''I have heard," he 
says, ''of two old men — complete strangers — ^passing 
each other on a dark London night, when one of 
them happened to be repeating to himself ^ just as 



26 INTEODUCTION 

Campbell did to the hackney coachmen of thb 
North Bridge of Edinburgh, the last lines of the 
account of Flodden Field in Marmion^ 'Charge, 
Chester, charge,' when suddenly a reply came out 
of the darkness, 'On, Stanley, on,' whereupon 
they finished the death of Marmion between them, 
took off their hats to each other, and parted, laugh- 
ing." The Lady of the Lake^ which followed in 
little more than a year, was receiyed with the same 
popular delight, and with even greater respect on 
the part of the critics. Even the formidable Jeff- 
rey, who was supposed to dine off slaughtered au- 
thors as the Giant in Jack and the Beanstalk dined 
off young Englishmen, keyed his voice to unwonted 
praise. The influx of tourists into the Trossachs, 
where the scene of the poem was laid, was so great 
as seriously to embarrass the mail coaches, until at 
last the posting charges had to be raised in order 
to diminish the traffic. Far away in Spain, at a 
trying moment of the Peninsular campaign. Sir 
Adam Ferguson, posted on a point of ground 
exposed to the enemy's fire, read to his men as 
they lay prostrate on the ground the passage from 
TJie Lady of the Lahe describing the combat 
between Roderick Dhu's Highlanders and the 
forces of the Earl of Mar; and 'Hhe listening 
soldiers only interrupted him by a joyous huzza 
when the French shot struck the bank <3lose above 
them." Such tributes — and they were legion — to 
the power of his poetry to move adventurous and 



LIFE OF SCOTT 27 

hardy men, must have been intoxicating to Scott ; 
there is small wonder that the success of his 
poems gave him, as he says, ''such a heeze as 
almost lifted him off his feet." 



Ill 

Scott's modesty was not in danger, but so far as 
his prudence was concerned, his success did really 
lift him off his feet. In 1812, still more encour- 
aged thereto by entering upon the emoluments of 
the office of Clerk of Sessions, the duties of which 
he had performed for six years without pay, he 
purchased Abbotsford, an estate on the Tweed, 
adjoining that of the Duke of Buccleugh, his kins- 
man, and near the beautiful ruins of Melrose 
Abbey. Here he began to carry out the dream 
of his life, to found a territorial family which 
should augment the power and fame of his clan. 
Beginning with a modest farm house and a farm of 
a hundred acres, he gradually bought, planted, and 
built, until the farm became a manorial domain 
and the farm house a castle. He had not gone far 
in this work before he began to realize that the 
returns from his poetry would never, suffice to meet 
such demands as would thus be made upon his 
purse. Byron's star was in the ascendant, and 
before its baleful magnificence Scott 's milder and 
more genial light visibly paled. He was himself 
the first to declare, with characteristic generosity, 



ab INTRODUCTION 

that the younger poet had ''bet"^ him at his owu 
craft. As Oarlyle says, ''he had held the 
€Overeignty for some half -score of years, a compar- 
atively long lease of it, and now the time seemed 
come for dethronement, for abdication. An 
anpleasant business; which, however, he held 
himself ready, as a brave man will, to transact 
mth composure and in silence." 

But, as it proved, there was no need for resigna- 
tion. The reign of metrical romance, brilliant but 
brief, was past, or nearly so. But Avhat of prose 
romance, which long ago, in picking out Don 
Quixote from the puzzling Spanish, he had 
promised himself he would one day attempt? 
With some such questioning of the Fates, Scott 
drew from his desk the sheets of a story begun 
seven years before, and abandoned because of the 
success of The Lay of the Last Minstrel. This 
story he now completed, and published as Waverley 
in the spring of 1814, — an event ''memorable in 
the annals of British literature; in the annals of 
British bookselling thrice and four times memor > 
able." The popularity of the metrical romances 
dwindled to insignificance before the enthusiasm 
with which this prose romance was received. 
A moment before quietly resolved to give up his 
place in the world's eye, and to live the life of an 
obscure country gentleman, Scott found himself 
launched once more on the tide of brave fortunes. 

* Bested, got the better of. 



LIFE OF SCOTT 29 

The Ballantyne publishing and printing houses 
ceased to totter, and settled themselves on what 
seemed the firmest of foundations. At Abbots- 
ford, buying, planting, and building began on a 
greater scale than had ever been planned in its 
owner's most sanguine moments. 

The history of the next eleven years in Scott's 
life is the history, on the one hand, of the rapidly- 
appearing novels, of a fame gradually spreading 
outward from Great Britain until it covered the 
civilized world, — a fame increased rather than 
diminished by the incognito which the ''author of 
Waverley'^ took great pains to preserve even after 
the secret had become an open one ; on the other 
hand, of the large-hearted, hospitable life at Abbots - 
ford, where, in spite of the importunities of curious 
and ill-bred tourists, bent on getting a glimpse of 
the "Wizard of the North," and in spite of the 
enormous mass of work, literary and oflBtcial, which 
Scott took upon himself to perform, the atmos- 
phere of country leisure and merriment was some- 
how miraculously preserved. This life of the 
hearty prosperous country laird was the one toward 
the realization of which all Scott's efforts were 
directed; it is worth while, therefore, to see as 
vividly as may be, what kind of life that was, that 
we may the better understand what kind of man 
he was who cared for it. The following extract 
from Lockhart's Life of Scott gives us at least one 
very characteristic aspect of the Abbotsford worlds 



30 INTRODUCTION 

^'It was a clear, bright September morning, with 
a sharpness in the air that doubled the animating 
influence of the sunshine ; and all was in readiness 
for a grand coursing-match on Newark Hill. The 
only guest who had chalked out other sport for 
himself was the staunchest of anglers, Mr. Eose; 
but he, too, was there on his shelty^ armed v/itb 
his salmon-rod and landing-net. . . . This little 
group of Waltonians, bound for Lord Somerville's 
preserve, remained lounging about, to witness the 
etart of the main cavalcade. Sir Walter, mounted 
on Sibj^'l, was marshalling the order of procession 
with a huge hunting-whip; and among a dozen 
frolicsome youths and maidens, who seemed dis- 
posed to laugh at all discipline, appeared, each on 
horseback, each as eager as the youngest sportsman 
in the troop, Sir Humphrey Davy, Dr. Wollaston, 
and the patrisrch of Scottish belles-lettres, Henry 
Mackenzie. . . • Laidlaw (the steward of Abbots- 
ford) on a strong-tailed wiry Highlander, yclept 
Hoddin Grey, which carried him nimbly and 
stoutly, although his feet almost touched the 
ground, was the adjutant. But the most pictur- 
esque figure was the illustrious inventor of the 
safety-lamp (Sir Humphrey Davy) ... a brown 
hat with flexible brim, surrounded with line upon 
line of catgut, and innumerable fly-hooks; jack- 
boots worthy of a Dutch smuggler, and a fustian 
surtout dabbled with the blood of salmon, made a 
fine contrast with the smart jacket, white-cord 
breeches, and well-polished jockey-boots of the less 
distinguished cavaliers about him. Dr. Wollaston 
was in black ; and with his noble serene dignity of 
countenance might have passed for a sporting 
archbishop. Mr. Mackenzie, at this time in the 
seventy -sixth year of his age, with a hat turned up 



LIFE OF SCOTT 31 

with green, green spectacles, green jacket, and long 
brown leathern gaiters buttoned upon his nether 
anatomy, wore a dog-whistle round his neck. *, . 
Tom Purdie (one of Scott's servants) and his sub- 
alterns had preceded us by a few hours with all the 
grey -hounds that could be collected at Abbotsford, 
Darnick, and Melrose; but the giant Maida had 
remained as his master's orderly, and now 
gambolled about Sibyl Grey, barking for mere joy 
like a spaniel puppy. 

"The order of march had all been settled, when 
Scott's daughter Anne broke from the line, scream- 
ing with laughter, and exclaimed, 'Papa, papa, 1 
knew you could never think of going without your 
pet !' Scott looked round, and I rather think there 
was a blush as well as a smile upon his face, whf^u 
he perceived a little black pig frisking about his 
pony, evidently a self-elected addition to the 
party of the day. He tried to look stern, and 
cracked his whip at the creature, but was in a 
moment obliged to join in the general cheers. 
Poor piggy soon found a strap round its neck, 
and was dragged into the background; Scott, 
watching the" retreat, repeated with mock pathos 
the first verse of an old pastoral song — 

*What will I do gin my hoggie die? 
My joy, my pride, my hoggie I 
My only beast, I had na mae, 
And wow, but I was vogiel* 

— ^the cheers were redoubled — and the squadron 
moved on." 

Let us supplement this with one more picture, 

from the same hand, showing Scott in a little more 

intimate light. The passage was written in 1821, 

after Lockhart had married Scott's eldest daughter, 



32 INTEODUCTION 

and gone to spend the summer at Ohiefswood, a 
cottage on the Abbotsf ord estate : 

''We were near enough Abbotsf ord to partake as 
often as we liked of its brilliant and constantly 
varying society; yet could do so without being 
exposed to the worry and exhaustion of spirit which 
the daily reception of new-comers entailed upon 
all the family, except Scott himself. But in 
truth, even he was not always proof against 
the annoyances connected with such a style of 
open house-keeping. . , . When sore beset 
at home in this way, he would every now and 
then discover that he had some very particular 
business to attend to on an outlying part of 
his estate, and craving the indulgence of 
his guests overnight, appear at the cabin in the 
glen before its inhabitants were astir in the morn- 
ing. The clatter of Sibyl Grey's hoofs, the yelp- 
ing of Mustard and Spice, and his own joyous 
shout of reveilUe under our windows, were the 
signal that he had burst his toils, and meant for 
that day to 'take his ease in his inn.' On descend- 
ing, he was found to be seated with all his dogs and 
ours about him, under a spreading ash that over- 
shadowed half the bank between the cottage and 
the brook, pointing the edge of his woodman's 
axe, and listening to Tom Purdie's lecture touch- 
ing the plantation that most needed thinning. 
After breakfast he would take possession of a 
dressing-room upstairs, and write a chapter of 
The Pirate \ and then, having made up and des- 
patched his packet for Mr. Ballantyne, away to 
join Purdie wherever the foresters were at work 
. . . until it was time to rejoin his own party at 
Abbotsford, or the quiet circle of the cottage. 
When his guests were few and friendly, he often 



LIFE OF SCOTT 33 

made them come over and meet him at Chiefswood 
in a body towards evening. ... He was ready 
with all sorts of devices to supply the wants of a 
narrow establishment; he used to delight par- 
ticularly in sinking the wine in a well under the 
brae ere he went out, and hauling up the basket 
just before dinner was announced, — this primitive 
device being, he said, what he had always practised 
when a young housekeeper, and in his opinion far 
superior in its results to any application of ice; 
and in the same spirit, whenever the weather was 
sufficiently genial, he voted for dining out of doors 
altogether." 

Few events of importance except the successive 

appearances of ''our bulks," as Tom Pur die called 

his master's novels, and an occasional visit to 

London or the continent, intervened to break the 

busy monotony of this Abbotsford life. On one 

of these visits to London, Scott was invited to dine 

with the Prince Eegent, and when the prince 

became King George IV., in 1830, almost the 

first act of his reign was to create Scott a baronet. 

Scott accepted the honor gratefully, as coming, 

he said, "from the original source of all honor." 

There can well be two opinions as to whether this 

least admirable of English kings constituted a very 

prime fountain of honor, judged by democratic 

standards; but to Scott's mind, such an imputation 

would have been next to sacrilege. The feudal 

bias of his mind, strong to start with, had been 

Btrengthened by his long sojourn among the visions 

of a feudal past ; the ideals of feudalism were living 



34 INTRODUCTIOJS 

realities to him ; and he accepted knighthood from 
his king's hand in exactly the same spirit which 
determined his attitude of humility towards his 
*'chief," the Duke of Buccleugh, and which 
impelled him to exhaust his genias in the effort to 
build up a great family estate. 

There were already signs that the enormous bur* 
den of work under which he seemed to move so 
lightly, was telling on him. The Bride of LammeV' 
moGT^ The Legend of Mo7itrose, and Ivanhoe^ had all 
of them been dictated between screams of pain, 
wrung from his lips by a chronic cramp of the 
stomach. By the time he reached Redgauntlet and 
8t, Ronan^s Well^ there began to be heard faint 
murmurings of discontent from his public, hints 
that he was writing too fast, and that the noble wine 
he had poured them for so long was growing at last a 
trifle watery. To add to these causes of uneasiness, 
the commercial ventures in which he was interested 
drifted again into a precarious state. He had him- 
self fallen into the bad habit of forestalling the 
gains from his novels by heavy drafts on his pub- 
lishers, and the example thus set was followed 
faithfully by John Ballantyne. Scott's good humor 
and his partner's bad judgment saddled the concern 
with a lot of unsalable books. In 1818 the affairs 
of the book -selling business had to be closed up, 
Constable taking over the unsalable stock ana 
assuming the outstanding liabilities in return for 
copyright privileges covering some of Scott's 



LIFE OF SCOTT 3S 

novels. This so burdened the veteran publisher 
that when, in 1825, a large London firm failed, it 
carried him down also — and with him James 
Ballantyne, .with whom he had entered into close 
relations. Scott's secret connection with Bal- 
lantyne had continued; accordingly he woke up 
one fine day to find himself worse than beggared, 
being personally liable for one hundred and thirty 
thousand pounds. 

rv 

The years intervening between this calamity and 
Scott's death form one of the saddest and at ihe 
same time most heroic chapters in the history of 
literature. The fragile health of Lady Scott 
succumbed almost immediately to the crushing 
blow, and she died in a few months. Scott sur- 
rendered Abbotsford to his creditors and took up 
humble lodgings in Edinburgh. Here, with a 
pride and stoical courage as quiet as it was splendid, 
he settled down to fill with the earnings of his pen 
the vast gulf of debt fo' which he was morally 
scarcely responsible at all. In three years he wrote 
Woodstoch^ three Chronicles of the Canongate^ the 
Fair Maid of Perth^ Anne of Geierstein^ the first 
series of the Tales of a Grandfather^ and a Life of 
Napoleon^ equal to thirteen volumes of novel size, 
besides editing and annotating a complete edition 
of his own works. All these together netted his 
creditors £40,000. Touched by the efforts he was 



36 INTRODUCTIOJN 

making to settle their claims, they now presented 
him with Abbotsford, and thither he returned to 
spend the few years remaining to him. In 1830 
he suffered a first stroke of paralysis ; refusing to 
give up, however, he made one more desperate rally 
to recapture his old power of story-telling. Count 
Robert of Paris and Castle Dangerous were the 
pathetic result; they are not to be taken into 
account in any estimate of his powers, for they are 
manifestly the work of a paralytic patient. The 
gloomy picture is darkened by an incident which 
illustrates strikingly ODe phase of Scott's character. 

The great Eeform Bill was being discussed 
throughout Scotland, menacing what were really 
abuses, but what Scott, with his intense conserva- 
tism, believed to be sacred and inviolable institu- 
tions. The dying man roused himself to make a 
stand against the abominable bill. In a speech 
which he made at Jedburgh, he was hissed and 
hooted by the crowd, and he left the town with the 
dastardly cry of "Burk Sir Walter !" ringing in hig 
ears. 

Nature now intervened to ease the intolerable 
strain. Scott's anxiety concerning his debt grad- 
ually gave way to an hallucination that it had 
all been paid. His friends took advantage of the 
quietude which followed to induce him to make the 
journey to Italy, in the fear that the severe winter 
of Scotland would prove fatal. A ship of His 
Majesty's fleet was^put at his disposal, and he set 



LIFE OF SCOTT 37 

sail for Malta. The youthful adventurousness of 
the man flared up again oddly for a moment, when 
he insisted on being set ashore upon a Yolcanic 
island in the Mediterranean which had appeared 
but a few days before and which sank beneath the 
surface shortly after. The climate of Malta at first 
appeared to benefit him ; but when he heard, one 
day, of the death of Goethe at Weimar, he seemed 
seized with a sudden apprehension of his own end, 
and insisted upon hurrying back through Europe, 
in order that he might look once more on Abbots- 
ford. On the ride from Edinburgh he remained 
for the first two stages entirely unconscious. But 
as the carriage entered the valley of the Gala he 
opened his eyes and murmured the name of 
objects as they passed, ''Gala water, surely, — 
Buckholm, — Torwoodlee. " When the towers of 
Abbotsford came in view, he was so filled with 
delight that he could scarcely be restrained from 
leaping out. At the gates he greeted faithful 
Laidlaw in a voice strong and hearty as of old : 
*'Why, man, how often I have thought of you!'' 
and smiled and wept over the dogs who came rush- 
ing as in bygone times to lick his hand. He died 
a few days later, on the afternoon of a glorious 
autumn day, with all the windows open, so that he 
might catch to the last the whisper of the Tweed 
over its pebbles. 

"And so/' says Carlyle, ''the curtain falls; and 
the strong Walter Scott is with us no more. A 



3b INTRODUCTION 

possession from him does remain ; widely scattered; 
yet attainable ; not inconsiderable. It can be said 
of him, when he departed, he took a Man's life 
along with him. No sounder piece of British man- 
hood was put together in that eighteenth century 
of Time. Alas, his fine Scotch face, with its 
shaggy honesty, sagacity and goodness, when we 
saw it latterly on the Edinburgh streets, was all 
worn with care, the joy all fled from it; — ploughed 
deep with labour and sorrow. We shall never 
forget it ; we shall never see it again. Adieu, Sir 
Walter, pride of all Scotchmen, take om- proud and 
sad farewell." 



IL SCOTT'S PLACE IN THE ROMANTIC 
MOVEMENT 

In order rightly to appreciate the poetry of 
Scott it is necessary to understand something of 
that remarkable ''Eomantic Movement" which 
took place toward the end of the eighteenth cen- 
tury, and within a space of twenty-five years com- 
pletely changed the face of English literature. Both 
the causes and the effects of this movement were 
much more than merely literary; the ''romantic 
revival" penetrated every crevice and ramification 
of life in those parts of Europe which it affected ; 
its social, political, and religious results were all 
deeply significant. But we must here confine our- 
selves to such aspects of the revival as showed them- 
selves in English poetry. 

Eighteenth century poetry had been distinguished 
by its polish, its formal correctness, or — ^to use a 
term in much favor with critics of that day — its 
*' elegance." The various and wayward metrical 
effects of the Elizabethan and Jacobean poets, had 
been discarded for a few well-recognized verse 
forms, which themselves in turn had become still 
further limited by the application to them of pre- 
cise rules of structure. Hand in hand with this 
restricting process in metre, had gone a similar 

39 



40 INTRODUCTION 

tendency in diction. The simple, concrete phrases 
of daily speech had given way to stately periphrases ; 
the rich and riotous vocabulary of earlier poetry 
had been replaced by one more decorous, measured, 
and high-sounding. A corresponding process of 
selection and exclusion was applied to the subject 
matter of poetry. Passion, lyric exaltation, delight 
in the concrete life of man and nature, passed out 
of fashion; in their stead came social satire, 
criticism, generalized observation. While the 
classical influence, as it is usually called, was at its 
height, with such men as Dry den and Pope to 
exemplify it, it did a great work; but toward the 
end of the eighth decade of the eighteenth century 
it had visibly run to seed. The feeble Hayley, the 
silly Delia Crusca, the arid Erasmus Darwin, were 
its only exemplars. England was ripe for a literary 
revolution, a return to nature and to passion ; and 
such a revolution was not slow in coming. 

It announced itself first in George Crabbe, who 
turned to paint the life of the poor with patient 
realism; in Burns, who poured out in his songs the 
passion of love, the passion of sorrow, the passion 
of conviviality ; in Blake, who tried to reach across 
the horizon of visible fact to mystical heavens of 
more enduring reality. Following close upon these 
men came the four poets destined to accomplish 
the revolution which the early comers had begun. 
They were born within four years of each other, 
Wordsworth in 1770, Scott in 1771, Coleridge in 



THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 41 

1772, Southey in 1774. As we look ax these four 
men now, and estimate their worth as poets, we see 
that Southey drops almost out of the account, and 
that Wordsworth and Coleridge stand, so far as the 
highest qualities of poetry go, far above Scott, as, 
indeed, Blake and Burns do also. But the con- 
temporary judgment upon them was directly the 
reverse; and Scott's poetry exercised an influence 
over his age immeasurably greater than that of 
any of the other three. Let us attempt to dis- 
cover what qualities this poetry possessed which 
gave it its astonishing hold upon the age when it 
was written. In so doing, we may discover 
indirectly some of the reasons why it still retains a 
large portion of its popularity, and perhaps arrive 
at some grounds of judgment by which we may test 
its right thereto. 

One reason why Scott's poetry was immediately 
welcomed, while that of Wordsworth and of 
Coleridge lay neglected, is to be found in the fact 
that in the matter of diction Scott was much less 
revolutionary than they. By nature and education 
he was conservative ; he put The Lay of the Last 
Minstrel into the mouth of a rude harper of the 
North in order to shield himself from the charge 
of "attempting to set up a new school in poetry," 
and he never throughout his life violated the con- 
ventions, literary or social, if he could possibly 
avoid doing so. This bias toward conservatism 
and conventionality shows itself particularly in the 



42 INTRODUCTION 

language of his poems. He was compelled, of 
course, to use much more concrete and Tiyid terms 
than the eighteenth century poets had used, because 
ho was dealing with much more concrete and vivid 
matter; but his language, nevertheless, has a pre- 
vailing stateliness, and at times an artificiality, 
which recommended it to readers tired of the 
inanities of Hayley and Mason, but unwilling to 
accept the startling simplicity and concreteness of 
diction exemplified by the Lake poets at their best. 

Another peculiarity of Scott's poetry which 
made powerfully for its popularity, was its spirited 
metre. People were weary of the heroic couplet, 
and turned eagerly to these hurried verses, that 
went on their way with the sharp tramp of moss- 
troopers, and heated the blood like a drum. The 
metres of Coleridge, subtle, delicate, and poignant, 
had been passed by with indifference, — had not been 
heard perhaps, for lack of ears trained to hear; 
but Scott's metrical effects wero such as a child 
could appreciate, and a soldier could carry in his 
head. 

Analogous to this treatment of metre, though 
belonging to a less formal side of his art, was 
Scott's treatment of nature, the landscape setting 
of his stories. Perhaps the most obvious feature 
of the romantic revival was a reawakening of 
interest in out-door nature. It was as if for ^ 
hundred years past people had been stricken blind 
^8 soou. as they passed from the city streets into 



THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 43 

the country. A trim garden, an artfully placed 
country house, a well-kept preserve, ttey might 
see ; but for tho great shaggy world of mountain 
and sea — ^it had been shut out of man's elegant 
vision. Before Scott began to write there had 
been no lack of prophets of the new nature-wor- 
ship, but none of them of a sort to catch the 
general ear. Wordsworth's pantheism was too 
mystical, too delicate and intuitive, to recommend 
itself to any but chosen spirits ; Crabbe's descrip- 
tions were too minute, Coleridge's too intense, to 
please. Scott was the first to paint nature with a 
broad, free touch, without raptures or philosophiz- 
ing, but with a healthy pleasure in its obvious 
beauties, such as appeal to average men. His 
"scenery" seldom exists for its own sake, but 
serves, as it should, for background and setting of 
his story. As his readers followed the fortunes of 
William of Deloraine or Eoderick Dhu, they 
traversed by sunlight and by moonlight landscapes 
of wild romantic charm, and felt their beauty quite 
naturally, as a part of the excitement of that wild 
life. They felt it the more readily because of a 
touch of artificial stateliness in the handling, a 
slight theatrical heightening of effect — -from an 
absolute point of view a defect, but highly con- 
genial to tho taste of the time. It was the scenic 
side of nature which Scott gave, and gave inimi- 
tably, while Burns was piercing to the inner heart 
of her tenderness in his lines To a Mountain Daisy ^ 



44 INTRODUCTION 

and To a Mouse^ while Wordsworth was mystically 
communing with her soul, in his Tint em Abbey, 
It was the scenic side of nature for which the per- 
ceptions of men were ripe ; so they left profounder 
poets to their musings, and followed after the poet 
who could give them a brilliant story set in a bril- 
liant scene. 

Again, the emotional key of Scott's poetry was 
on a comprehensible plane. The situations with 
which he deals, the passions, ambitions^ satisfac- 
tions, which he portrays, belong, in one form or 
another, to all men, or at least are easily grasped by 
the imaginations of all men. It has often been 
said that Scott is the most Homeric of English 
poets ; so far as the claim rests on considerations of 
style, it is hardly to be granted, for nothing could 
be farther than the hurrying torrent of Scott's 
verse from the "long and refluent music" of 
Homer. But in this other respe(?t, that he deals 
in the rudimentary stuff of human character in a 
straightforward way, without a hint of modern 
complexities and super -subtleties, he is really akin 
to the master poet of antiquity. This, added to 
the crude wild life which he pictures, the vigorous 
sweep of his action, the sincere glow of romance 
which bathes his story — all so tonic in their effect 
upon minds long used to the stuffy decorum of 
didactic poetry, completed the triumph of The Lay 
of the Last Miiistrel^ Marmion^ and The Lady of 
the Lakey over their age. 



THE ROMANTIC MOVEMENT 45 

As has been already suggested, Scott cannot be 
put in the first rank of poets. No compromise 
can be made on this point, because upon it the 
whole theory of poetry depends. Neither on the 
formal nor on the essential sides of his art is he 
among the small company of the supreme. And 
no one understood this better than himself. He 
touched the keynote of his own power, though with 
too great modesty, when he said, ''I am sensible 
that if there is anything good about my poetry . . 
. . it is a hurried frankness of composition which 
pleases soldiers, sailors, and young people of bold 
and active dispositions. " The poet Campbell, who 
was so fascinated by Scott's ballad cf Cadyow Castle 
that he used to repeat it aloud on the North Bridge 
of Edinburgh until "the whole fraternity of coach- 
men knew him by tongue as he passed," character- 
izes the predominant charm of Scott's poetry as 
lying in a "strongs pithy eloquence," which is 
perhaps only another name for ''hurried frankness 
of composition. " If this is not the highest quality 
to which poetry can attain, it is a tery admirable 
one; and it will be a sad day for the English -speak- 
ing race wben there shall not be found persons of 
every age and walk of life, to take the same delights 
in these stirring poems as their author loved to 
think was taken by ''soldiers, sailors, and young 
people of bold and active dispositions." 



III_THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

I — HISTORICAL SETTI:N'G 

The Lady of the Lake deals with a distinct 
epoch in the life of King James V of Scotland, 
and has lying back of it a considerable amount of 
historical fact, an understanding of which will 
help in the appreciation of the poem. During his 
minority the king was under the tutelage of Archie 
bald Douglas, sixth Earl of Angus, who had mar- 
ried the king's mother. The young monarch 
chafed for a long time under this authority, but 
the Douglasses were so powerful that he was 
unable to shake it off, in spite of several desperate 
attempts on the part of his sympathizers to rescue 
him. In 1528 the king, then sixteen years of age, 
escaped from his own castle of Falkland to Stirling 
Castle. The governor of Stirling, an enemy of the 
Douglas family, received him joyfully. There 
soon gathered about his standard a sufficient num- 
ber of powerful peers to enable him to depose the 
Earl of Angus from the regency and to banish him 
and all his family to England. The Douglas who 
figures in the poem is an imaginary uncle of the 
banished regent, and himself under the ban, com- 
pelled to hide away in the shelter provided for him 
by Eoderick Dhu on the lonely island in Loch 



THE LADY OF THE LAKE 47 

Katrine. He is represented as having been loved 
and trusted by King James during the boyhood of 
the latter, before the enmity sprung up between the 
house of Angus and the throne. This enmity, to 
quote from the History of the House of Douglas^ 
published at Edinburgh in 1743, "was so inveter- 
ate, that numerous as their allies were, their nearest 
friends, even in the most remote parts of Scotland, 
durst not entertain them, unless under the strict- 
est and closest disguise." 

The outlawed border chieftain, Eoderick Dhu, 
who gives shelter to the persecuted Douglas, is a 
fictitious character, but one entirely typical of the 
time and place. The expedition undertaken by 
the young king against the Border clans, under 
the guise of a hunting party, is in part, at 
least, historic. Pitscottie's history says: "In 
1529 James V made a convention at Edinburgh 
for the purpose of considering the best mode of 
quelling the Border robbers, who, during the 
license of his minority and the troubles which fol- 
lowed, had committed many exorbitances. 
Accordingly, he assembled a flying army of ten 
thousand men, consisting of his principal nobility 
and their followers, who were directed to bring 
their hawks and dogs with them, that the monarch 
might refresh himself with sport during the inter- 
vals of military execution. With this array he 
swept through Ettrick forest, where he hanged 
over the gate of his own castle Piers Cockburn of 



48 INTRODUCTION 

Henderland, who had prepared, according to tia 
dition, a feast for his reception.'' 

II — GENEKAL CKITICISM AKD ANALYSIS 

The Lady of the Lake appeared in 1810. Two 
years before, 3Iarmi07i had vastly increased the 
popular enthusiasm aroused by The Tjay of the Last 
Minstrel^ and the success of his second long poem 
had so exhilarated Scott that, as he says, he ''felt 
equal to anything and everything. ^' To one of his 
kinswomen, who urged him not to jeopardize his 
fame by another effort in the same kind, he gaily 
quoted the words of Montrose : 

He either fears his fate too much 
Or his deserts are small, * 

Who dares not put it to the touch, 
To win or lose it all. 

The result justified his confidence; for not only 
was The Lady of the LaTce as successful as its pred- 
ecessors, but it remains the most sterling of Scott's 
poems. The somewhat cheap supernaturalism of 
the Lay appears in it only for a moment ; both the 
story and the characters are of a less theatrical 
type than in Marmion; and it has a glow, anima- 
tion, and onset, which was denied to the later 
poems, Rokehy and The Lord of the Lsles. 

The following outline abridged from the excellent 
one given by Francis Jeffrey in the Edinburgh 



THE LADY OF THE LAKE 49 

Revietv for August, 1810, will be useful 'as a basis 
for criticism of the matter and style of the poem. 

"The first canto begins with a description of a 
staghunt in the Highlands of Perthshire. As the 
chase lengthens, the sportsmen drop off; till at 
last the foremost horseman is left alone; and his 
horse, oyer come with fatigue, stumbles and dies. 
The adventurer, climbing up a craggy eminence, 
discovers Loch Katrine spread out in evening glory 
before him. The huntsman winds his horn ; and 
sees, to his infinite surprise, a little skiff, guided by 
a lovely woman, glide from beneath the trees that 
overhang the water, and approach the shore at his 
feet. Upon the stranger's approach, she pushes 
the shallop from the shore in alarm. After a 
short parley, however, she carries him to a woody 
island, where she leads him into a sort of sylvan 
mansion, rudely constructed, and hung round 
with trophies of war and the chase. An elderly 
lady is introduced at supper ; and the stranger, after 
disclosing himself to be 'James Fitz-James, the 
knight of Snowdoun,' tries in vain to discover the 
name and history of the ladies. 

"The second canto opens with a picture of the 
aged harper, Allan-bane, sitting on the island 
beach with the damsel, watching the skiff which 
carries the stranger back to land. A conversation 
ensues, from which the reader gathers that the 
lady is a daughter of the Douglas, who, being 
exiled by royal displeasure from court, had 
accepted this asylum from Sir Koderick Dhu, a 
Highland chieftain long outlawed for deeds of 
blood ; that this dark chief is in love with his fair 
protegee^ but that her affections are engaged to 
Malcolm Graeme, a younger and more amiable 
mountaineer. The sojind of distant music is heard 



^0 INTRODUCTION 

on the lake ; and the barges of Sir Eoderick are 
discovered, proceeding in triumph to the island. 
Ellen, hearing her father's born at that instant on 
the opposite shore, flies to meet him and Malcolm 
Graeme, who is received with cold and stately 
civility by the lord of the isle. Sir Eoderick 
informs the Douglas that his retreat has been dis- 
covered, and that the King (James V), under pre- 
tence of hunting, has assembled a large force in 
the neighborhood. He then proposes impetuously 
that they should unite their fortunes by his mar- 
riage with Ellen, and rouse the whole Western 
Highlands. The Douglas, intimating that his 
daughter has repugnances which she cannot over- 
come, declares that he will retire to a cave in the 
neighboring mountains until the issue of the King's 
threat is seen. The heart of Eoderick is wrung 
with agony at this rejection; and Avhen Malcolm 
advances to Ellen, he pushes him violently back — 
and a scuffle ensues, which is with difficulty 
appeased by the giant arm of Douglas. Malcolm 
then withdraws in proud resentment, plunges into 
the water, and swims over by moonlight fo the 
mainland. 

"The third canto opens with an account of the 
ceremonies employed in summoning the clan. 
This is accomplished by the consecration of a small 
wooden cross, which, with its points scorched and 
dipped in blood, is carried with incredible celerity 
though the whole territorv of the chieftain. The 
eager fidelity with which this fatal signal is carried 
on, is represented with great spirit. A youth 
starts from the side of his father's coffin, to bear it 
forward, and, having run his stage, delivers it to a 
young bridegroom returning from church, who 
instantly binds his plaid around him, and rushes 



THE LADY OF THE LAKE 51 

onward. In the meantime Douglas and his 
daughter have taken refuge in the mountain cave; 
and Sir Roderick, passing near their retreat on his 
way to the muster, hears Ellen's voice singing her 
evening hymn to the A^gin. He does not obtrude 
on her devotions, but hurries to the place of 
rendezvous. 

"The fourth canto begins with some ceremonies 
by a wild hermit of the clan, to ascertain the issue 
of the impending war; and this oracle is obtained 
— that the party shall prevail which first sheds the 
blood of its adversary. The scene then shifts to 
the retreat of the Douglas, where the minstrel is 
trying to soothe Ellen in her alarm at the dis- 
appearance of her father, by singing a fairy ballad 
to her. As the song ends, the knight of Snow- 
doun suddenly appears before her, declares his love, 
and urges her to put herself under his protection. 
Ellen throws herself on his generosity, confesses 
her attachment to Graeme, and prevails on him to 
seek his own safety by a speedy retreat from the 
territory of Roderick Dhu. Before he goes^ the 
stranger presents her with a ring, which he says he 
has received from King James, with a promise to 
grant any boon asked by the person producing it. 
As he retreals, his suspicions' are excited by the 
conduct of his guide, and confirmed by the warn- 
ings of a mad woman whom they encounter. His 
false guide discharges an arrow at him, which kills 
the maniac. The knight slays the murderer; and 
learning from the expiring victim that her brain 
had been turned by the cruelty of Sir Roderick 
Dhu, he vows vengeance. When chilled with the 
midnight cold and exhausted with fatigue, he sud- 
denly comes upon a chief reposing by a lonely 
watch-fire ; and being challen^-ed in the name of 



52 INTRODUCTION 

Eoderick Dhu, boldly avows himself his enemy. 
The clansman, however, disdains to take advan- 
tage of a worn-out wanderer ; and pledges him safe 
escort out of Sir Roderick's territory, when he 
must answer his defiance with his sword. The 
stranger accepts these chivalrous terms; and the 
warriors sup and sleep together. This ends the 
fourth canto. 

*'At dawn, the knight and the mountaineer pro- 
ceed toward the Lowland frontier. A ^dispute 
arises concerning the character of Roderick Dhu, 
and the knight expresses his desire to meet in per- 
son and do vengeance upon the predatory chief. 
'Have then thy wish!' answers his guide; and 
gives a loud whistle. A whole legion of armed 
men start up from their mountain ambush in the 
heath; while the chief turns proudly and says, 'I 
am Roderick Dhu!' Sir Roderick then by a signal 
dismisses his men to their concealment. Arrived 
at his frontier, the chief forces the knight to stand 
upon his defense. Roderick, after a hard combat 
is laid wounded on the ground; Fitz-James, sound- 
ing his bugle, brings four squires to his side; and, 
after giving the wounded chief into their charge, 
gallops rapidly on towards Stirling. As he ascends 
the hill to the castle, he descries approaching 
the same place the giant, form of Douglas, who has 
come to deliver himself up to the king, in order to 
save Malcolm Graeme and Sir Roderick from the 
impending danger. Before entering the castle, 
Douglas is seized with the whim to engage in the 
holiday sports which are going forward outside; he 
wins prize after prize, and receives his reward 
fi^om the hand of the prince, who, however, does 
not condescend to recognize his former favorite. 
Roused at last by an insult from one of the royal 



THE LADY OF THE LAKE 53 

grooms, Douglas proclaims himself, and is ordered 
into custody by the king. At this instant a mes- 
senger arrives with tidings of an approaching battle 
between the clan of Roderick and the King's lien- 
tenant, the Earl of Mar; and is ordered back to 
prevent the conflict, by announcing that both Sir 
Roderick and Lord Douglas are in the hands oi 
their sovereign. 

"The last canto opens in the guard room of the 
royal castle at Stirling, at dawn. While the mer- 
cenaries are quarrelling and singing at the close of 
a night of debauch, the sentinels introduce Ellen 
and the minstrel Allan-bane — who are come in 
search of Douglas. Ellen awes the ruffian soldiery 
by her grace and liberality, and is at length con- 
ducted to a more seemly waiting place, until she 
may obtain audience with the king. While Allan- 
bane, in the cell of Sir Roderick, sings to the 
dying chieftain of the glorious battle which has just 
been waged by his clansmen against the forces of 
the Earl of Mar, Ellen, in another part of the 
palace, hears the voice of Malcolm Graeme lament- 
ing his captivity from an adjoining turret. Before 
she recovers from her agitation she is startled by 
the appearance of Eitz- James, who comes to 
inform her that the court is assembled, and the 
king at leisure to receive her suit. He conducts 
her to the hall of presence, round which Ellen 
casts a timid and eager glance for the monarch. 
But all the glittering figures are uncovered, and 
James Eitz- James alone wears his cap and plume ! 
The Knight of Snowdoun is the King of Scotland! 
Struck with awe and terror, Ellen falls speechless 
at his feet, pointing to the ring which he has put 
upon her finger. The prince raises her with eager 
kindness, declares that her father is forgiven, and 



54 INTRODUCTION 

bids her ask a boon for some other person. The 
name of Graeme trembles on her lips, but she can- 
not trust herself to utter it. The king, in playful 
vengeance, condemns Malcolm Grgeme to fetters, 
takes a chain of gold from his own neck, and 
throwing it over that of the young chief, puts the 
clasp in the hand of Ellen." 

From this outline, it will be evident that Scott 
had gained greatly in narrative power since the pro- 
duction of The Lay of the Last Minstrel, "Not only 
are the elements of the ''fable" (to use the word in 
its old-fashioned sense) harmonious and probable, 
but the various incidents grow out of each other in 
a natural and necessary way. The Lay was at best 
a skilful bit of carpentering whereof the severaj 
parts were nicely juxtaposed; The Lady of the 
Lake is an organism, and its several members par- 
take of a common life. A few weaknesses may, it 
is true, be pointed out in it. The warning of 
Fitz-James by the mad woman's song makes too 
large a draft upon our romantic credulity. Her 
appearance is at once so accidental and so oppor* 
tune that it resembles those supernatural interven- 
tions employed by ancient tragedy to cut the 
knot of a difficult situation, which have given 
rise to the phrase deus ex machina. The improba- 
bility of the episode is further increased by the 
fact that she puts her warning in the form of a 
song. Scott's love of romantic episode manifestly 
led him astray here. Further, the story as a 
whole shares with all stories which turn upon the 



THE LADY OF THE LaKE 55 

revelation of a concealed identity, the disadvantage 
of being able to affect, the reader powerfully but 
once, since on a second reading the element of sus- 
pense and surprise is lacking. In so far as The 
Lady of the Lake is a mere story, or as it has been 
called, a "versified novelette," this is not a weak- 
ness ; but in so far as it is a poem, with the claim 
which poetry legitimately makes to be read and 
re-read for its intrinsic beauty, it constitutes a 
real defect. 

Not only does this poem, with the slight excep- 
tions just mentioned, show a gain over the earlier 
poems in narrative power, but it also marks an 
advance in character delineation. The characters 
of the Lay are, with one or two exceptions, mere 
lay-figures; Lord Cranstoun and Margaret are 
the most conventional of lovers; William of 
Deloraine is little more than an animated suit 
of armor, and the Lady of Branksome, except 
at one point, when from her walls she defies 
the English invaders, is nearly or quite feature- 
less. With the characters of The Lady of the Lake 
the case is very different. The three rivals for 
Ellen's hand are real men, with individualities 
which enhance and deepen the picturesqueness of 
each other by contrast. The easy grace and 
courtly chivalry, of the disguised king, the quick 
kindling o^^ his fancy at sight of the mysterious 
maid of juoch Katrine, his quick generosity in 
relinquishing his suit-- when he finds that she loves * 



5f> INTRODUCTION 

another, make him one of the most life-like figures 
of romance. Eoderick Dhu, nursing darkly his 
clannish hatreds, his hopeless love, and his bitter 
jealousy, with a delicate chivalry sending its 
bright thread through the tissue of his savage 
nature, is drawn with an equally convincing hand. 
Against his gloomy figure the boyish magnanimity 
of Malcolm Gramme, Ellen's brave faithfulness, 
made human by a surface play of coquetry, and 
the quiet nobility of the exiled Douglas, stand 
out in varied relief. Judged in connection with 
the more conventional character types of Marmion^ 
and with the draped automatons of the Lay^ the 
characters of The Lady of the Lake show the 
gradual growth in Scott of that dramatic imagina- 
tion which was later to fill the vast scene of his 
prose romances with unforgettable figures. 

But the most significant advance which this 
poem shows over earlier work is in the greater 
genuineness of the poetic effect. In the descrip- 
tion, for example, of the approach of Roderick 
Dhu's boats to the island, there is a singular 
depth of race feeling. There is borne in upon us, 
as we read, the realization of a wild and peculiar 
civilization; we get a breath of poetry keen and 
strange, like the shrilling of the bag-pipes across 
the water. Again, in the speeding of the fiery 
cross there is a primitive depth of poetry which 
carries with it a sense of "old, unhappy, far-off 
things;" it appeals to latent memories in us, 



THE LADY OF THE LAKE 57 

which have been handed down from an ancestral 
past. There is nothing in either TJie Lay of the 
Last MiJistrel or Marmi07i to compare for natural 
dramatic force with the situation in Tlie Lady of 
the Lake when Eoderick Dhu whistles for his 
clansmen to appear, and the astonished Fitz- 
James sees the lonely mountain side suddenly 
bristle with tartans and spears ; and the fight which 
follows at the ford is a real fight, in a sense not at 
all to be applied to the tournaments and other con- 
ventional encounters of the earlier poems. Even 
where Scott still clung to supernatural devices to 
help along his story, he handles them with 
much greater subtlety than he had done in 
his earlier efforts. The dropping of Douglas's 
sword from its scabbard when his disguised enemy 
enters the room, arouses the imagination without 
burdening it. It has the same imaginative advan- 
tage over such an episode as that in the Lay^ where 
the ghost of the wizard comes to bear off the gob- 
lin page, as suggestion always has over explicit 
statement. This gain in subtlety of treatment 
will be made still more apparent by comparing 
with any supernatural episode of the Lay^ the 
account in The Lady of the Lalce of the unearthly 
parentage of Brian the Hermit. 

The gain in style is less perceptible. Scott was 
never a great stylist; he struck out at the very 
first a nervous, hurrying metre, and a strong 
though rather commonplace diction, upon which 



58 INTRODUCTION 

he never substantially improved. Abundant action^ 
rapid transitions, stirring descriptions, common 
sentiments and ordinary language heightened by 
a dash of pomp and novelty, above all a pervading 
animation, spirit, intrepidity, — these are the con- 
stant elements of Scott's success, present here in 
their accustomed measure. In the broader sense of 
style, however, where the word is understood to 
include all the processes leading to a given poetical 
effect. The Lady of the Lake has some advantage, 
even over Marmion. It contains nothing, to be 
sure, so fine or so typical of Scott's peculiar power, as 
the account of the Battle of Flodden in Mai^mion; 
the minstrel's recital of the battle of Beal' an 
Duine does not abide the comparison. The 
quieter parts of The Lady of the Lalce^ moreover, 
are sometimes disfigured by a sentimentality and 
*'prettiness" happily unfrequent with Scott. But 
the description of the approach of Eoderick Dhu's 
war-boats, already mentioned, the superb landscape 
delineation in the fifth canto, and the beautiful 
twilight ending of canto third, can well stand as 
prime types of Scott's stylistic power. 



THE LADY OF THE LAKE 



CANTO FIEST 



THE CHASE 



Harp of the North! that mouldering long hast 
hung 

On the witch-elm that shades Saint Fillan's 
spring, 
And down the fitful breeze thy numbers flung, 

Till envious ivy did around thee cling, 
Muffling with verdant ringlet every string, — 

Minstrel Harp, still must thine accents sleep? 
Mid rustling leaves and fountains murmuring. 

Still must thy sweeter sounds their silence keep, 
Nor bid a warrior smile, nor teach a maid to weep? 

Not thus, in ancient days of Caledon, 

Was thy voice mute amid the festal crowd, 

When lay of hopeless love, or glory won, 
Aroused the fearful, or subdued the proud. 

59 



60 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

At each according pause, was heard aloud 

Thine ardent symphony sublime and high ! 15 

Fair dames and crested chiefs attention bow'd ; 
For still the burden of thy minstrelsy 

Was Knighthood's dauntless deed, and Beauty's 
matchless eye. 

wake once more! how rude soe'er the hand 

That ventures o'er thy magic maze to stray; 20 

Avake once more ! though scarce my skill com- 
mand 

Some feeble echoing of thine earlier lay :' 
Though harsh and faint, and soon to die away. 

And all unworthy of thy nobler strain, 
Yet if one heart throb higher at its sway, 25 

The wizard note has not been touch'd in vain. 
Then silent be no more! Enchantress, wake 



again ! 



I 



The stag at eve had drunk his fill. 

Where danced the moon on Monan's rill, 

And deep his midnight lair had made 

In lone Glenartney's hazel shade; 

But, when the sun his beacon red 5 

Had kindled on Benvoirlich's head, 

The deep-mouth'd bloodhound's heavy bay 

Resounded up the rocky way. 

And faint, from farther 'distance borne, 

Were heard the clanging hoof and horn. 10 



CANTO FIRST 61 



II 



As Chief, who hears his warder call, 
*'To arms! the foemen storm the wall/' . 
The antler 'd monarch of the waste 
Sprung from his heathery couch in haste. 
But, ere his fleet career he took, 
The dew-drops from his flanks he shook; 
Like crested leader proud and high, 
Toss'd his beam'd frontlet to the sky; 
A moment gazed adown the dale, 
A moment snaff'd the tainted gale, 
A moment listen'd to the cry. 
That thicken'd as the chase drew nigh; 
Then, as the headmost foes appear'd, 
With one brave bound the copse he clear'd. 
And, stretching forward free and far, 
Sought the wild heaths of Uam-Var. 

Ill 

Yeird on the view the opening pack; 
Eock, glen, and cavern, paid them back; 
To many a mingled sound at once 
The awaken 'd mountain gave response. 
A hundred dogs bay'd deep and strong, 
Clatter'd a hundred steeds along. 
Their peal the merry horns rung out, 
A hundred voices join'd the shout; 
With hark and whoop and w^ild halloo. 
Xo rest Benvoirlich's echoes kneWc 



62 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Far from the tumult fled the roe, 
Close in her covert cower 'd the doe, 
The falcon, from her caum on high. 
Cast on the rout a wondering eye, 
Till far beyond her piercing ken 
The hurricane had swept the glen. 
Faint, and more faint, its failiug din 
Return'd from cavern, cliff, and linn, 
And silence settled, wide and still. 
On the lone wood and mighty hill. 

IV 

Less loud the sounds of silvan war 
Disturbed the heights of Uam-Var, 
And roused the cavern, Avhere, 'tis told, 
A giant made his den of old; 
For ere that steep ascent was w^on, 
High in his pathway hung the sun, 
And many a gallant, stay'd perforce. 
Was fain to breathe his faltering horse. 
And of the trackers of the deer. 
Scarce half the lessening pack was near ; 
So shrewdly on the mountain side, 
Had the bold burst their mettle tried. 

V 

The noble stag was pausing now 
Upon the mountain's southern brow, 
Where broad extended, far beneath. 
The varied realms of fair Menteith. 



CANTO FIRST 6^ 

5 With anxious eye he wancler'd o'er 

Mountain and meadow, moss and moor, 

And ponder'd refuge from his toil. 

By far Lochard or Aberfoyle. 

But nearer was the copsewood grey, 
i> That waved and wept on Loch-Achrayj 

And mingled with the pine-trees blue 

On the bold cliffs of Benyenue. 

Fresh vigour with the hope return'd, 

With flying foot the heath he spurn'd, 
5 Held westward with unwearied race, 

And left behind the panting chase. 

VI 

'Twere long to tell what steeds gave o'er, 

As swept the hunt through Cambusmore: 

What reins were tighten 'd in despair, 

When rose Benledi's ridge in air; 
> Who flagg'd upon Bochastle's heath, 

Who shunn'd to stem the flooded Teith,— 

For twice that day, from shore to shore, 

The gallant stag swam stoutly o'er. 

Few were the stragglers, foUoAving far, 
) That reach 'd the lake of Vennachar; 

And when the Brigg of Turk was won, 

The headmost horseman rode alone. 

YII 

Alone, but with unbated zeal, 

That horseman plied the scourge and steel | 



64 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

For jaded now, and spent with toil, 

Emboss 'd with foam, and dark with soil, 

While every gasp with sobs he drew, 

The labouring stag strain'd fall in view. 

Two dogs of black Saint Hubert's breed, 

tJnmatch'd for courage, breath, and speed, 

Fast on his flj'ing traces came. 

And all bat won that desperate game; 

For, scarce a spear's length from his haunch, 

Vindictive toil'd the bloodhounds stanch; 

Nor nearer might the dogs attain, 

ISTor farther might the quarry strain. 

Thus up the margin of the lake, 

Between the precipice and brake. 

O'er stock and rock their race they take. 



VIII 

The Hunter mark'd that mountain high, 
The lone lake's western boundary. 
And deem'd the stag must turn to bay. 
Where that huge rampart barr'd the way; 
Already glorying in the prize, 
Measured his antlers with his eves ; 
For the death-wound and death-halloo, 
Muster 'd his breath, his whinyard drew;— 
But thundering as he came prepared. 
With ready arm and weapon bared, 
The v^ily quarry shunn'd the shock. 



CANTO FIRST b& 

And turn'd him from the opposing rock; 

Then, dashing down a darksome glen, # 

Soon lost to honnd and Hunter's ken, 
5 In the deep Trosachs' wildest nook 

His solitary refuge took. 

There, while close couch 'd, the thicket shed 

CoJd dews and wild-flowers on his head. 

He heard the baffled dogs in vain 
Rave through the hollow pass amain, 

Chiding the rocks that yell'd again. 



IX 



Close on the hounds the Hunter came, 
To cheer them on the vanish 'd game; 
But, stumbling in the rugged dell, 
The gallant horse exhausted fell 
The impatient rider strove in vain 
To rouse him with the spur and rein. 
For the good steed, his labours o'er, 
Stretch'd his stiff limbs, to rise no more; 
Then, touch 'd with pity and remorse. 
He sorrow'd o'er the expiring horse. 
"I little thought, when first thy rein 
I slack 'd upon the banks of Seine, 
That Highland eagle e'er should feed 
On thy fleet limbs, my matchless steed! 
Woe worth the chase, woe worth the day. 
That costs thy life, my gallant grey!" 



68 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

X 

Then through the dell his horn resounds, 
From vain pursuit to call the hounds. 
Back limp'd, with slow and crippled pace, 
The sulky leaders of the chase ; 
Close to their master's side they press 'd, 
With drooping tail and humbled crest; 
But still the dingle's hollow throat 
Prolong'd the swelling bugle-note. 
The owlets started from their dream, 
The eagles answered with their scream, 
Round and around the sounds were cast. 
Till echo seem'd an answering blast; 
And on the Hunter hied his way. 
To Join some comrades of the day ; 
Yet often paused, so strange the road, 
So wondrous were the scenes it show'd. 

XI 

The western waves of ebbing day 
EoU'd o'er the glen their level way; 
Each purple peak, each flinty spire, 
Was bathed in floods of living fire. 
But not a setting beam could glow 
Within the dark ravines below, 
Where twined the path in shadow hid, 
Round many a rocky pyramid. 
Shooting abruptly from the dell 
Its thunder -splinter 'd pinnacle; 



CANTO FIRST 67 

Bound many an insulated mass, 

The native bulwarks of the pass, 

Huge as the tower which builders vain 

Presumptuous piled on Shinar's plain. 
15 The rocky summits, split »and rent, 

Form'd turret, dome, or battlement, 

Or seem'd fantastically set 

With cupola or minaret. 

Wild crests as pagod ever deck'd, 
20 Or mosque of Eastern architect. 

ISTor were these earth-born castles bare, 

Nor lack'd they many a banner fair ; 

For, from their shiver'd brows displayed, 

Far o'er the unfathomable glade, 
25 All twinkling with the dewdrops sheen, 

The brier -rose fell in streamers green. 

And creeping shrubs, of thousand dyes, 

Waved in the west-wind's summer sighs. 



XII 

Boon nature scattered, free and wild. 
Each plant or flower, the mountain's child. 
Here eglantine embalm'd the air. 
Hawthorn and hazel mingled there; 
The primrose pale and violet flower. 
Found in each cliff a narrow bower ; 
Fox-glove and night-shade, side by side, 
Emblems of punishment and pride, 



68 THE LADY OF THE LAKE . 

Grouped tlieir dark hues with every stain 

The weather-beaten crags retain. id 

With boughs that quaked at every breath, 

Grey birch and aspen wept beneath ; - 

Aloft, the ash and warrior oak 

Cast anchor in the rifted rock ; 

And, higher yet, the pine-tree hung <r 

His shatter 'd trunk, and frequent flung, 

Where seem'd the cliffs to meet on high, 

His bows athwart the narrow'd sky. 

Highest of all, where white peaks glanced. 

Where glist'ning streamers waved and danced, m 

The wanderer's eye could barely view 

The summer heaven's delicious blue; 

So wondrous wild, the whole might seem 

The scenery of a fairy dream. 



XIII 

Onward, amid the copse 'gan peep 

A narrow inlet, still and deep, 

Affording scarce such breadth of brim 

As served the wild duck's brood to swim. 

Lost for a space, through thickets veering, 5 

But broader when again appearing, 

Tall rocks and tufted knolls their face 

Could on the dark-blue mirror trace; 

And farther as the Hunter stray'd. 

Still broader sweep its channels made. 10 



CANTO FIRST 

The shaggy mounds ne longer stood, 
Emerging from entangled wood, 
But, wave-encircled, seem'd to float, 
Like castle girdled with its moat ; * 
15 Yet broader floods extending still 
Divide them from their parent hill, 
Till each, retiring, claims to be 
An islet in an inland sea. 



XIV 

And now, to issue from the glen. 
No pathway meets the wanderer's ken. 
Unless he climb, with footing nice, 
A far projecting precipice. 

5 The broom's tough roots his ladder made, 
The hazel saplings lent their aid ; 
And thus an airy point he won. 
Where, gleaming with the setting sun, 
One burnish'd sheet of living gold, 

10 Loch Katrine lay beneath him roU'd, 
In all her length far winding lay. 
With promontory, creek, and bay. 
And islands that, empurpled bright, 
Floated amid the livelier light, 

15 And mountains, that like giants stand, 
To sentinel enchanted land. 
High on the south, huge Benvenue 
Down on the lake in masses threw 



70 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurl'dj 

The fragments of an earlier world ; 20 

A wildering forest feather 'd o'er 

His ruin'd sides and summit hoar, 

While on the north, through middle air, 

Ben-an heaved high his forehead bare. 

XV 

From the steep promontory gazed 

The stranger, raptured and amazed, 

And, ''What a scene were here," he cried, 

"For princely pomp, or churchman's pride! 

On this bold brow, a lordly tower ; 6 

In that soft vale, a lady's bower; 

On yonder meadow, far away. 

The turrets of a cloister grey ; 

How blithely might the bugle -horn 

Chide, on the lake, the lingering morn! 10 

How sweet, at eve, the lover's lute 

Chime, when the groves were still and mute! 

And, when the midnight moon should lave 

Her forehead in the silver wave. 

How solemn on the ear would come u 

The holy matin's distant hum. 

While the deep peal's commanding tone 

Should wake, in yonder islet lone, 

A sainted hermit from his cell. 

To drop a bead with every knell — 20 

And bugle, lute, and bell, and all, 



CANTO FIRST 7J 

Should each bewilder 'd stranger call 
To friendly feast, and lighted hall. 

XVI 

''Blithe were it then to wander here! 
But now, — beshrew yon nimble deer, — 
Like that same hermit's,, thin and spare. 
The copse must give my evening fare; 

5 Some mossy bank my couch must be, 
Some rustling oak my canopy. 
Yet pass we that; the war and chase 
Give little choice of resting-place; — 
A summer night, in greenwood spent, 

10 Were but to-morrow's merriment: 
But hosts may in these wilds abound, 
Such as are better miss'd than found; 
To meet with Highland plunderers herOj 
Were worse than loss of steed or deer.— 

15 I am alone; — my bugle-strain 

May call some straggler of the train ; 
Or, fall the worst that may betide, 
Ere now this falchion has been tried."' 



XVII 

But scarce again his horn he wound, 
When lo! forth starting at the sound, 
From underneath an aged oak, 
That slanted from the islet rock. 



72 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

A damsel giiider of its way, 5 

A little skiff shot to the bay, 

That round the promontory steep 

Led its deep line in graceful sweep, 

Eddying, in almost viewless wave. 

The weeping willow-twig to lave, 10 

And kiss, with whispering sound and slow, 

'The beach of pebbles bright as snow. 

The boat had touch 'd this silver strand, 

Just as the Hunter left his stand. 

And stood conceal'd amid the brake, 15 

To view this Lady of the Lake. 

The maiden paused, as if again 

She thought to catch the distant strain. 

With head up-raised, and look intent, 

And eye and ear attentive bent, 40 

And locks flung back, and lips apart, 

Like monument of Grecian art. 

In listening mood, she seem'd to stand. 

The guardian Naiad of the strand. 

XVIII 

And ne'er did Grecian chisel trace 

A Nymph, a Naiad, or a Grace, 

Of finer form, or lovelier face! 

What though the sun, with ardent frown. 

Had slightly tinged her cheek with brown,— % 

The sportive toil, which, short and light, 

Had dyed her glowing hue so bright, 



CANTO FIKST 73 

Served too in hastier swell to show 

Short glimpses of a breast of snow: 
10 What though no rule of courtly grace 

To measured mood had train 'd her pace, — - 

A foot more light, a step more true, 

Ne'er from the heath -flower dash'd the dew: 

E'en the slight harebell raised its head, 
15 Elastic from her airy tread : 

What though upon her speech there hung 

The accents of the mountain tongue, — 

Those silver sounds, so soft, so dear. 

The listener held his breath to hear ! 



XIX 

A chieftain's daughter seem'd the maid; 
Her satin snood, her silken plaid, 
Her golden brooch such birth betray'd. 
And seldom was a snood amid 

5 Such wild luxuriant ringlets hid. 

Whose glossy black to shame might bring 
The plumage of the raven's wing; 
And seldom o'er a breast so fair. 
Mantled a plaid with modest care, 

10 And never brooch the folds combined 
Above a heart more good and kind. 
Her kindness and her worth to spy, 
You need but gaze on Ellen's eye; 
Not Katrine, in her mirror blue, 

15 Gives back the shaggy banks more true, 



74 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Than every free-born glance confess 'd , 

The guileless movements of her breast ; 

Whether joy danced in her dark eye, 

Or woe or pity claim'd a sigh, 

Or filial love was glowing there, 20 

Or meek devotion poiir'd a prayer, 

Or tale of injury call'd forth 

The indignant spirit of the North. 

One only passion unreveal'd, 

With maiden pride the maid conceard, 25 

Yet not less purely felt tlie flame; — 

0! need I tell that passion's name! 



XX 

Impatient of the silent horn, 

Now on the gale her voice was borne :— 

''Father!" she cried; the rocks around 

Loved to prolong the genfcle sound. 

A while she paused, no answer came, — 5 

"Malcolm, was thine the blast?" the name 

Less resolutely utter 'd, fell. 

The echoes could not catch the swell. 

"A stranger I," the Huntsman said, 

Advancing from the hazel shade. IC 

The maid, alarm 'd, with hasty oar, 

Push'd her light shallop from the shore, 

And when a space was gain'd between, 

Closer she drew her bosom's screen; 



CANTO FIRST 75 

15 (So forth the startled swan would swing, 
So turn to prune his ruffled wing.) ^ 

Then safe, though fluttered and amazed, 
She paused, and on the stranger gazed. 
Not his the form, nor his the eye, 

20 That youthful maidens v^ont to fly. 

XXI 

On his bold visage middle age 

Had slightly press 'd its signet sage, 

Yet had not qaench'd the open truth 

And fiery vehemence of yonth; 
5 Forward and frolic glee was there. 

The will to do, the soul to dare. 

The sparkling glance, soon blown to fire. 

Of hasty love, or headlong ire. 

His limbs were cast in manly mould, 
10 For hardy sports or contest bold; 

And though in peaceful garb array'd, 

And weaponless, except his blade. 

His stately mien as well implied 

A high-born heart, a martial pride, 
15 As if a Baron's crest he wore. 

And sheathed in armour trode the shore. 

Slighting the petty need he show'd, 

He told of his benighted road; 

His ready speech flow'd fair and free, 
20 In phrase of gentlest courtesy; 

Yet seem'd that tone, and gesture bland, 

Less used to sue than to command. 



76 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

XXII 

A while the maid the stranger eyed, 

And, reassured, at length replied, 

That Highland halls were open still 

To wilder 'd wanderers of the hill. 

"Nor think you unexpected come o 

To yon lone isle, our desert home ; 

Before the heath had lost the dew, 

This morn, a couch was pull'd for you; 

On yonder mountain's purple head 

Have ptarmigan and heath-cock bled, a, 

And our broad nets have swept the mere, 

To furnish forth your evening cheer." — = 

"Now, by the rood, my lovely maid. 

Your courtesy has err'd," he said; 

"No right have I to claim, misplaced, ,i6 

The welcome of expected guest. 

A wanderer, here by fortune tost, 

My way, my friends, my courser lost^ 

I ne'er before, believe me, fair, 

Have ever drawn your mountain air, y» 

Till on this lake's romantic strand, 

I found a fay in fairy land!" — 

XXIII 

"I well believe," the maid replied. 

As her light skiff approach'd the side, — 

"I well believe, that ne'er before 

Your foot has trod Loch Katrine's shore ^ 



CANTO FIRST 77 

5 But yet, as far as yesternight, 

Old Allan-bane foretold your plight, —» 

A grey-haired sire, whose eye intent 

Was on the vision'd future bent. 

He saw your steed, a dappled grey, 
10 Lie dead beneath the birchen way; 

Painted exacfc your form and mien. 

Your hunting suit of Lincoln green, 

That tassell'd horn so gaily gilt, 

That falchion's crooked blade and hilt, 
15 That cap with heron plumage trim, 

And yon two hounds so dark and grim. 

He bade that all should ready be, 

To grace a guest of fair degree ; 

But light I held his prophecy, 
20 And deem'd it was my father's horn. 

Whose echoes o'er the lake were borne." 

XXIV 

The stranger smiled: — "Since to your home 

A destined errant knight I come. 

Announced by prophet sooth and old, 

Doom'd, doubtless, for achievement bold, 
5 I'll lightly front each high emprise. 

For one kind glance of those bright eyes. 

Permit me, first, the task to guide 

Your fairy frigate o'er the tide." 

The maid, with smile suppress 'd and sly, 
10 The toil unwonted saw him try ; 



7& THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

For seldom sure, if e'er before, 

His noble hand had grasped an oar : 

Yet with main strength his strokes he drew, 

And o'er the lake the shallop flew ; 

With heads erect, and whimpering cry, it 

The hounds behind their passage ply. 

Nor frequent does the bright oar break 

The dark'ning mirror of the lake. 

Until the rocky isle tbey reach, 

And moor their shallop on the beach. 20 

XXV 

The stranger view'd the shore around; 

'Twas all so close with copsewood bound, 

Nor track nor pathway might declare 

That human foot frequented there, 

Until the mountain-maiden show'd d 

A clambering unsuspected road, 

That winded through the tangled screen, 

And open'd on a narrow green. 

Where weeping birch and willow round 

With their long fibres swept the ground. le 

Here, for retreat in dangerous hour. 

Some chief had framed a rustic bower. 

XXVI 

It was a lodge of ample size. 

But strange of structure and device ; 

Of such materials, as around 

The workman's hand had readiest found. 



CANTO FIRST 79 

5 Lopp'd of their boughs, their hoar trunks bared^ 

And by the hatchet rudely squared, 

To give the walls their destined height. 

The sturdy oak and ash unite ; 

While moss and clay and leaves combined 
10 To fence each crevice from the wind. 

The lighter pine-trees, overhead, 

Their slender length for rafters spread, 

And wither 'd heath and rushes dry 

Supplied a russet canopy. 
15 Due westward, fronting to the green, 

A rural portico was seen, 

Aloft on native pillars borne, 

Of mountain fir with bark unshorn, 

Where Ellen's hand had taught to twine 
20 The ivy and Idaean vine. 

The clematis, the favour'd flower 

Which boasts the name of virgin-bower, 

And every hardy plant could bear 

Loch Katrine's keen and searching air. 
25 An instant in this porch she staid. 

And gaily to the stranger said, 
. ''On heaven and on thy lady call, 

And enter the enchanted hall!" 

XXVII 

''My hope, my heaven, my trust must be, 
My gentle guide, in following thee." — 
He cross 'd the threshold — and a clang 
Of angry steel that instant rang. 



80 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

To his bold brow his spirit rush'd, ' s 

But i30on for vain alarm he blnsh'd, 

When on the floor he saw display'd, 

Cause of the din, a naked blade 

Dropp'd from the sheath, that careless flung 

Upon a stag's huge antlers swung; lo 

For all around, the walls to grace, 

Hung trophies of the fight or chase : 

A target there, a bugle here, 

A battle-axe, a hunting spear, 

And broadswords, bows, and arrows store, is 

With the tusk'd trophies of the boar. 

Here grins the wolf as when he died, 

And there the wild -cat's brindled hide 

The frontlet of the elk adorns. 

Or mantles o'er the bison's horns; ' 2C 

Pennons and flags defaced and stain'd, 

That blackening streaks of blood retain'd, 

And deer-skins, dappled, dun, and white, 

With otter's fur and seal's unite, 

In rude and uncouth tapestry all, 25 

To garnish forth the silvan hall. 



XXVIII 

I 

The wondering stranger round Lim gazed, 
And next the fallen weapon raised : — 
Few were the arms whose sinewy strength, 
Sufficed to stretch it forth at length. 



CANTO FIRST m 

5 And as the brand he poised and sway'd, 

*'I never knew but one," he said, 

''Whose stalwart arm might braok to wield 

A blade like this in battle-field." 

She sigh'd, then smiled and took the word; 
10 "You see the guardian champion's sword: 

As light it trembles in his hand, 

As in my grasp a hazel wand ; 

My sire's tall form might grace the part 

Of Ferragus, or Ascabart; 
'15 But in the absent giant's hold 

Are women now, and menials old.'' 



XXIX 

The mistress of the mansion came, 
Mature of age, a graceful dame; 
Whose easy step and stately port 
Had well become a princely court, 

5 To whom, though more than kindred knew, 
Young Ellen gave a mother's due. 
Meet welcome ta her guest she made, 
And every courteous rite was paid, 
That hospitality could claim, 

10 Though all unask'd his birth and name. 
Such then the reverence to a guest. 
That fellest foe might join the feast. 
And from his deadliest foeman's door 
Unquestion'd turn, the banquet o'er. 



82 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

At length his rank the stranger names, 15 

"The Knight of Snowdoiin, James Fitz-James; 

Lord of a barren heritage, 

"^hich his brave sires, from age to age, 

By their good swords had held with toil; 

\Iis sire had fallen in such turmoil, 20 

A.nd he, God wot, was forced to stand 

Oft for his right with blade in hand. 

This morning, with Lord Moray's train 

3e chased a stalwart stag in vain, 

Dutstripp'd his comrades, miss'd the deer, 25 

Lost his good steed, and wander 'd here." 



XXX 

t^'ain would the Knight in turn require * 

The name and state of Ellen's sire. 

Well show'd the elder lady's mien, 

That courts and cities she had seen ; 

Ellen, though more her looks display'd t 

The simple grace of silvan maid, 

In speech and gesture, form and face, 

Show'd she was come of gentle race. 

'Twere strange in ruder rank to find 

Such looks, such manners, and such mind. ic 

Each hint the Knight of Snowdoun gave, 

Dame Margaret heard with silence grave ; 

Or Ellen, innocently gay, 

Turn'd all inquiry light away: — 



CANTO FIRST 83 

15 '* Weird women we! by dale and down 

We dwell, afar from tower and town. 

We stem the flood, we ride the blast, 

On wandering knights onr spells we cast; 

While viewless minstrels touch the string, 
20 'Tis thus our charmed rhymes we sing." 

She sung, and still a harp unseen 

Fiird up the symphony between. 



XXXI 

SONG 

'^Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er, 

Sleep the sleep that knows no breaking: 
Dream of battled fields no more, 
Days of danger, nights of waking. 
5 In our isle's enchanted hall, 
, Hands unseen thy couch are strewing, 
Fairy strains of music fall, 

Every sense in slumber dewing. 
' Soldier, rest! thy warfare o'er, 
to Dream of fighting fields no more : 

Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking. 
Morn of toil, nor night of waking. 

^' No rude sound shall reach thine ear. 
Armour's clang, or war-stfeed champing, 
'5 Trump nor pibroch summon here 

Mustering clan, or squadron tramping. 



84 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Yet the lark's shrill fife may come 

At the day-break from the fallow, 
And the bittern sound his drum, 

Booming from the sedgy shallow. so 

Ruder sounds shall none be near, 
Guards nor warders challenge here, 
Here's no war -steed's neigh and champing, 
Shouting clans or squadrons stamping." 

XXXII 

She paused — then, blushing, led the lay 

To grace the stranger of the day. 

Her mellow notes awhile prolong 

The cadence of the flowing song. 

Till to her lips in measured frame 5 

The minstrel verse spontaneous came. 

SONG — {Continued) 

'^Huntsman, rest! thy chase is done, 

While our slumbrous spells assail ye, 
Dream not, with the rising sun. 

Bugles here shall sound reveille. io 

Sleep ! the deer is in his den ; 

Sleep! thy hounds are by thee lying; 
Sleep ! nor dream in yonder glen. 

How thy gallant steed lay dying. 
Huntsman, rest! thy chase is done, 15 

Think not of the rising sun. 



CANTO FIEST 85 

For at dawning to assail ye, 
Here no bugles sound reveille. " 

XXXIII 

The hall was clear'd — the stranger's bed 

Was there of mountain heather spread, 

Where oft a hundred guests had lain, 

And dream'd their forest sports again. 
5 But vainly did the heath-flower shed 

Its moorland fragrance round his head ; 

Not Ellen's spell had luU'd to rest 

The fever of his troubled breast. 

In broken dreams the image rose 
10 Of varied perils, pains, and woes: 

His steed now flounders in the brake, 

Now sinks his barge upon the lake ; 

Now leader of a broken host, 

His standard falls, his honour's lost. 
15 Then, — from my couch may heavenly might 

Ohase that worst phantom of the night ! — 

Again return'd the scenes of youth, 

Of confident undoubting truth; 

Again his soul he interchanged 
20 With friends whose hearts were long estrangedc 

They come, in dim procession led, 

The cold, the faithless, and the dead; 

As warm each hand, each brow as gay. 

As if they parted yesterday. 
25 And doubt distracts him at the view — 

were his senses false or true? 



86 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Dream 'd lie of death, or broken vow. 
Or is it all a yision now? 



XXXIV 

At length, with Ellen in a grove 

He seem'd to walk, and speak of love; 

She listen'd with a blush and sigh, 

His suit was warm, his hopes were high. 

He sought her yielded hand to clasp, ^ 

And a cold gauntlet met his grasp : 

The phantom's sex was changed and gone^ 

Upon its head a helmet shone; 

Slowly enlarged to giant size, 

With darken'd cheek and threatening eyes. 2€ 

The grisly visage, stern and hoar, 

To Ellen still a likeness bore. — 

He woke, and, panting with affright, 

Recaird the vision of the night. 

The hearth's decaying brands were red, 15 

A.nd deep and dusky, lustre shed. 

Half showing, half concealing, all 

The uncouth trophies of the hall. 

Mid those the stranger fixed his eye. 

Where that huge falchion hung on high, 20 

And thoughts on thoughts, a countless throng, 

Rush'd, chasing countless thoughts along^ 

Until, the giddy whirl to cure. 

He rose, and sous:ht the moonshine pure. 



CANTO FIRST 8? 

XXXV 

The wild-rose, eglantine, and broom, 

Wasted around their rich perfume : 

The birch-trees wept in fragrant balm, 

The aspens slept beneath the calm ; 
5 The silver light, with quivering glance, 

Play'd on the water's still expanse, — 

Wild were the heart whose passion's sway 

Could rage beneath the sober ray ! 

He felt its calm, that warrior guest, 
10 While thus he communed with his breast :-— 

''Why is it, at each turn I trace 

Some memory of that exiled race? 

Can I not mountain-maiden spy. 

But she must bear the Douglas eye? 
15 Can I not view a Highland brand. 

But it must match the Douglas hand? 

Can I not frame a fever 'd dream. 

But still the Douglas is the theme? 

I'll dream no more — by manly mind 
20 Not even in sleep is will resign'd. 

My midnight orisons said o'er, 

I'll turn to rest, and dream no more." 

His midnight orisons he told, 

A prayer with every bead of gold, 
25 Consign'd to heaven his cares and woes. 

And sunk in undisturb'd repose; 

Until the heath-cock shrilly crew. 

And morning dawn'd on Benvenue. 



CANTO SECOND 



THE ISLAND 
I 

At morn the black-cock trims his jetty wing, 

'Tis morning prompts the linnet's blithest lay, 
All Nature's children feel the matin spring 

Of life reviving, with reviving day ; 
And while yon little bark glides down the bay, 

Wafting the stranger on his way again, 
Morn's genial influence roused a minstrel grey, 

And sweetly o'er the lake was heard thy strain, 
Mix'd with the sounding harp, wbite-hair'd 
Allan-bane ! 



II 



SONG 



(( 



Not faster yonder rowers' might 
Flings from their oars the spray, 

Not faster yonder rippling bright, 

That tracks the shallop's course in light = 
Melts in the lake away. 

Than men from memory erase 

The benefits of former days ; 

88 



CANTO SECOND 89 

Then, stranger, go! good speed the while, 
Nor think again of the lonely isle. 

*'High place to thee in royal court, 

High place in battle line. 
Good hawk and hound for silvan sport. 
Where beauty sees the brave resort. 

The honour'd meed be thine! 
True be thy sword, thy friend sincere. 
Thy lady constant, kind, and dear, 
And lost in love, and friendship's smile 
Be memory of the lonely isle. 



Ill 



SONG — {Continued) 

''But if .beneath yon southern sky 

A plaided stranger roam. 
Whose drooping crest and stifled sigh^ 
And sunken cheek and heavy eye. 

Pine for his Highland home ; 
Then, warrior, then be thine to show 
The care that soothes a wanderer's woe; 
Eemember then thy hap erh while, 
A stranger in the lonely isle. 

''Or if on life's uncertain main 

Mishap shall mar thy sail ; 
If faithful, wise, and brave in vain, 
Woe, want, and exile thou sustain 

Beneath the fickle gale ; 



90 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Waste not a sigh on fortune changed, 15 

On thankless courts, or friends estranged, 
But come where kindred worth shall smile, 
To greet thee in the lonely isle." 

IV 

As died the sounds upon the tide, 

The shallop reach'd the mainland side, 

And ere his onward way he took, 

The stranger cast a lingering look, 

Where easily his eye might reach o 

The Harper on the islet beach. 

Reclined against a blighted tree. 

As wasted, grey, and worn as he. 

To minstrel meditation given, 

His reverend brow was raised to heaven, lo 

As from the rising sun to claim 

A sparkle of inspiring flame. 

His hand, reclined upon the wire, 

Seem'd watching the awakening fire; 

So' still he sate, as those who wait 15 

Till judgment speak the doom of fate; 

So still, as if no breeze might dare 

To lift one lock of hoary hair ; 

So still, as life itself were fled. 

In the last sound his harp had sped. -^o 

V 

Upon a rock with lichens wild. 
Beside him Ellen sate and smiled. — 



CANTO SECOND 91 

Smiled she to see the stately drake 

Lead forth his fleet upon the lake, 
5^ While her vex'd spaniel, from the beach, 

Bay'd at the prize beyond his reach? 

Yet tell me, then, the maid who knows, 

Why deepen'd on her cheek the rose?— 

Forgive, forgive, Fidelity! 
10 Perchance the maiden smiled to see 

Yon parting lingerer wave adieu, 

And stop and turn to wave anew; 

And, lovely ladies, ere your ire 

Condemn the heroine of my lyre, 
15 Show me the fair would scorn to spy, 

And prize such conquest of her eye ! 



VI 



While yet he loiter'd on the spot. 
It seem'd as Ellen mark'd him not; 
But when he turn'd him to the glade, 
One courteous parting sign she made; 

5 And after, oft the knight would say, 
That not when prize of festal day 
Was dealt him by the brightest fair, 
Who e'er wore jewel in her hair. 
So highly did his bosom swell, 

10 As at that simple mute farewell. 
Now with a trusty mountain-guide, 
And his dark stag-hounds by his side, 



92 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

He parts — the maid, unconscious still, 

Watch'd Mm wind slowly round the hill; 

But when his stately form was hid, i5 

The guardian in her bosom chid — 

''Thy Malcolm! vain and selfish maid!" 

'Twas thus upbraiding conscience said, — 

''Not so had Malcolm idly hung 

On the smooth phrase of southern tongue; 20 

Not so had Malcolm strain'd his eye 

Another step than thine to spy. — 

Wake, Allan-bane," aloud she cried, 

To the old Minstrel by her side, — 

"Arouse thee from thy moody dream! 25 

I'll give thy harp heroic theme. 

And warm thee with a noble name ; 

Pour forth the glory of the Grasme!" 

Scarce from her lip the word had rush'd, 

When deep the conscious maiden blush'd; ^ 

For of his clan, in hall and bower, 

Young Malcolm Graeme was held the flower. 



VII 

The Minstrel waked his harp — three times 
Arose the well-known martial chimes, 
And thrice their high heroic pride 
In melancholy murmurs died. 
"Vainly thou bid'st, noble maid," 
Clasping his wither'd hands, he said, 



CANTO SECOND 93 

''Vainly thou bid'st me wake the strain, 

Though all unwont to bid in vain. 

Alas ! thar mine a mightier hand 
10 Has tuned my harp, my strings has spann'd! 

I touch the chords of joy, but low 

And mournful answer notes of woe ; 

And the proud march, which victors tread. 

Sinks in the wailing for the dead. 
15 well for me, if mine alone 

That dirge's deep prophetic tone! 

If, as my tuneful fathers said, 

This harp, which erst Saint Modan sway'd, 

Can thus its master's fate foretell, 
80 Then welcome be the minstrel's knell! 



VIII 



cc 



But ah! dear lady, thus it sigh'd 
The eve thy sainted mother died; 
And such the sounds which, while I strove 
To wake a lay of war or love. 
Came marring all the festal mirth. 
Appalling me who gave them birth, 
And, disobedient to my call, 
Wail'd loud through Bothwell's banner'd hall, 
Ere Douglasses, to ruin driven, ; 

Were exiled from their native heaven. — 
Oh I if yet worse mishap and woe, 
My master's house must undergo, 



94 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Or aught but weal to Ellen fair, 

Brood in these accents of despair, 

No future bard, sad Harp! shall fling is 

Triumph or rapture from thy string; 

One short, one final strain shall flow, 

Fraught with unutterable woe, 

Then shiver 'd shall thy fragments lie, 

Thy master cast him down and die!" 20 



IX 



Soothing she answer 'd him — ''Assuage^ 

Mine honour 'd friend, the fears of age; 

All melodies to thee are known. 

That harp has rung, or pipe has blown, 

In Lowland vale or Highland glen, ft 

From Tweed to Spey — what marvel, then, 

At times, unbidden notes should rise. 

Confusedly bound in memory's ties, 

Entangling, as they rush along. 

The war-march with the funeral song?— to 

Small ground is now for boding fear ; 

Obscure, but safe, we rest us here. 

My sire, in native virtue great. 

Resigning lordship, lands, and state, 

Not then to fortune more resign'd, 4w 

Than yonder oak might give the wind; 

The graceful foliage storms may reave. 

The noble stem they cannot grieve. 



CANTO SECOND 9^ 

For me," — she stoop'd, and, looking round, 
20 Pliick'd a blue hare-bell from the ground, — 

*'For me, whose memory scarce conveys 

An image of more splendid days, 

This little flower, that loves the lea, 

May well my simple emblem be ; 
25 It drinks heaven's dew as blithe as rose 

That in the king's own garden gro vs; 

And when I place it in my hair, 

Allan, a bard, is bound to swear 

He ne'er saw coronet so fair." 
30 Then playfully the chaplet wild 

She wreath'd in her dark locks, and smiled. 

X 

Her smile, her speech, with winning sway, 

Wiled the old harper's mood away. 

With such a look as hermits throw. 

When angels stoop to soothe their woe, 
5 He gazed, till fond regret and pride 

Thrilled to* a tear, then thus replied: 

^'Loveliest and best! thou little know'st 

The rank, the honours, thou hast lost! 

might I live to see thee grace, 
10 In Scotland's court, thy birth-right place, 

To see my favourite's step advance. 

The lightest in the courtly dance. 

The cause of every gallant's sigh, 

And leading; star of everv eve. 



96 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

And theme of every minstrers art, H 

The Lady of the Bleeding Heart!"— 

XI 

''Fair dreams are these," the maiden cried^ 

(Light was her accent, yet she sigh'd;) 

"Yet is this mossy rock to me 

Worth splendid chair and canopy ; 

Nor would my footsteps spring more gay 5 

In courtly dance than blithe strathspey, 

Nor half so pleased mine ear incline 

To royal minstrel's lay as thine. ~ 

And then for suitors proud and high, 

To bend before my conquering eye, — 10 

Thou, flattering bard! thyself wilt say, 

That grim Sir Eoderick owns its sway. 

The Saxon scourge, Clan- Alpine's pride^ 

The terror of Loch-Lomond's side. 

Would, at my suit, thou know'st, delay 15 

A Lennox foray — for a day." — 

XII 

The ancient bard his glee repressed: 

"111 hast thou chosen theme for jest! 

For who, through all this western wild. 

Named Black Sir Eoderick e'er, and smiled! 

In Holy-Rood a knight he slew ; 5 

I saw, when back the dh'k he drew, 

Courtiers give place before the stride 

Of the undaunted homicide ; 



CANTO SECONb 97 

And since, though outlaw'd, hath his hand 
10 Full sternly kept his mountain land. 

Who else dared give — ah ! woe the day. 

That I such hated truth should say — 

The Douglas, like a stricken deer, 

Disown'd by every noble peer, 
15 Even the rude refuge we have here? 

Alas, this wild marauding Chief 

Alone might hazard our relief, 

And now thy maiden charms expand, 

Looks for his guerdon in thy hand ; 
20 Full soon may dispensation sought. 

To back his suit, from Eome be brought. 

Then, though an exile on the hill. 

Thy father, as the Douglas, still 

Be held in reverence and fear ; 
25 And though to Eoderick thou'rt so dear. 

That thou might 'st guide with silken thready 

Slave of thy will, this chieftain dread; 

Yet, loved maid, thy mirth refrain! 
.Thy hand is on a lion's mane." — 

XIII 

''Minstrel," the maid replied, and high 
Her father's soul glanced from her eye, 
*'My debts to Eodericlv's house I know: 
All that a mother could bestow, 
5 To Lady Margaret's care I owe, 
Since first un orphan in the wild 



J^8 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

She sorrow'd o'er her sister's child; 

To her brave chieftain son, from ire 

Of Scotland's king who shrouds my sire* 

A deeper, holier debt is owed; 6 

And, could I pay it with my blood, 

Allan ! Sir Koderick should command 

My blood, my life, — but not my hand. 

Eat her will Ellen Douglas dwell 

A votaress in Mar onnan's cell; jO 

Eather through realms beyond the sea, 

Seeking the world's cold charity. 

Where ne'er was spoke a Scottish word, 

And ne'er the name of Douglas heard. 

An outcast pilgrim will she rove, g5 

Than wed the man she cannot love. 

XIV 

''Thou shakest, good friend, thy tresses grey- 
That pleading look, what can it say 
But what I own? — I grant him brave, 
But wild as Bracklinn's thundering wave; 
And generous — save vindictive mood, 6 

Or jealous transport, chafe his blood: 
I grant him true to friendly band, 
As his claymore is to his hand ; 
But ! that very blade of steel 

More mercy for a foe would feel : P 

I grant him liberal, to fling 
Among his clan the wealth they bring. 



CANTO SECOND 99 

When back by lake and glen they wind, 

And in the Lowland leave behind, 
15 Where once some pleasant hamlet stood, 

A mass of ashes slaked with blood. 

The hand that for my father fought, 

I honour, as his daughter ought; 

But can I clasp it reeking red, 
20 From peasants slaughtered in their shed? 

NTo! wildly while his virtues gleam. 

They make his passions darker seem. 

And flash along his spirit high. 

Like lightning o'er the midnight sky. 
35 While yet a child, — and children know, 

Instinctive taught, the friend and foe, — 

I shudder 'd at his brow of gloom. 

His shadowy plaid, and sable plume ; 

A maiden grown, I ill could bear 
^0 His haughty mien and lordly air : 

But, if thou join'st a suitor's claim. 

In serious mood, to Roderick's name, 

r thrill with anguish! or, if e'er 

A Douglas knew the word, with fear. 
35 To change such odious theme were best, — - 

What think 'st thou of our stranger guest?" =-- 

XY 

"What think I of him? — woe the while 
That brought such wanderer to our isle ! 
Thy father's battle-brand, of yore 
For Tine-man forged by fairy lore. 



100 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

What time he leagued, no longer foes, i^ 

His Border spears with Hotspur's bows, 

Did, self-unscabbarded, foreshow 

The footstep of a secret foe. 

If courtly spy hath harbour 'd here, 

What may we for the Douglas fear? jc 

What for this island, deem 'd of old 

Clan-Alpine's last and surest hold? 

If neither spy nor foe, I pray 

What yet may jealous Roderick say? 

— IS[ay, wave not thy disdainful head, 15 

Bethink thee of the discord dread. 

That kindled when at Beltane game 

Thou ledst the dance with Malcolm Graeme; 

Still, though thy sire the peace renew'd. 

Smoulders in Roderick's breast the feud; 20 

Beware ! — But hark, what sounds are these? 

My dull ears catch no faltering breeze, 

No weeping birch, nor aspens wake, 

Nor breath is dimpling in the lake. 

Still is the canna's hoary beard, 85 

Yet, by my minstrel faith, I heard — 

And hark again ! some pipe of war 

Sends the bold pibroch from afar.'' 

XVI 

Far up the lengthen'd lake were spied 
Four darkening specks upon the tide, 
That, slow enlarging on the view. 
Four mann'd and masted barges grew. 



CANTO SECOND 101 

5 And, bearing downwards from Glengyle, 

Steer 'd full upon the lonely isle; 

The point of Brianchoil they pass'd, 

And, to the windward as they cast. 

Against the sun they gave to shine 
10 The bold Sir Eoderick's banner 'd Pine. 

Nearer and nearer as they bear, 

Spears, pikes, and axes flash in air. 

Now might you see the tartans brave, 

And plaids and plumage dance and wave 
15 Now see the bonnets sink and rise. 

As his tough oar the rower plies ; 

See, flashing at each sturdy stroke. 

The wave ascending into smoke ; 

See the proud pipers on the bow, 
20 And mark the gaudy streamers flow 

From their loud chanters down, and sweep 

The furrow 'd bosom of the deep, 

As, rushing tln^ough the lake amain. 

They plied the ancient Highland strain. 



XVII 

Ever, as on they bore, more loud 
And louder rung the pibroch proud. 
At first the sound, by distance tame, 
Mellow'd along the waters came, 
And, lingering long by cape and bay, 
Waird every harsher note away, 



102 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Then bursting bolder on the ear, 

The clan's shrill Gathering they could hear; 

Those thrilling sounds, that call the might 

Of Old Clan- Alpine to the fight. ic 

Thick beat the rapid notes, as when 

The mustering hundreds shake the glen, 

And hurrying at the signal dread, 

The batter 'd earth returns their tread. 

Then prelude light, of livelier tone, is 

Express 'd their merry marching on, 

Ere peal of closing battle rose, 

With mingled outcry, shrieks, and blows; 

And mimic din of stroke and ward, 

As broad sword upon target jarr'd; ao 

And groaning pause, ere yet again, 

Condensed, the battle yell'd amain; 

The rapid charge, the rallying shout, 

Eetreat borne headlong into rout, 

And bursts of triumph, to declare 26 

Clan- Alpine's conquest — all were there. 

Nor ended thus the strain; but slow 

Sunk. in a moan prolong'd and low. 

And changed the conquering clarion swell, 

For wild lament o'er those that fell. 3o 

XVIII 

The war-pipes ceased; but lake and hill 
Were busy with their echoes still; 
And, when they slept, a vocal strain 
Bade their hoarse chorus wake again, 



CANTO SECOND 103 

5 While loud a hundred clansmen raise 

Their voices in their Chieftain's praise. 

Each boatman, bending to his oar, 

With measured sweep the burden bore, 

In such wild cadence, as the breeze 
10 Makes through December's leafless trees. 

The chorus first could Allan know, 

"Eoderick Vich Alpine, hoi iro!" 

And near, and nearer as they row'd, 

Distinct the martial ditty flow'd. 



XIX 



BOAT so:ng 

Hail to the Chief who in triumph advances ! 

Honour 'd and bless'd be the ever-green Pine! 
Long may the tree, in his banner that glances. 
Flourish, the shelter and grace of our line! 
5 ' Heaven send it happy dew, 

Earth lend it sap anew, 
Gayly to bourgeon, and broadly to grow, 
While every Highland glen 
Sends our shout back agen, 
10 '^Eoderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe!" 

Ours is no sapling, chance-sown by the fountain. 
Blooming at Beltane, in winter to fade ; 

When the whirlwind has stripp'd every leaf on the 
mountain, 
The more shall Clan-Alpine exult in her shade. 



104 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Moor'd in the rifted rock, ib 

Proof to the tempest's shock, 
Firmer he roots him the ruder it blow; 

Menteith and Breadalbane, then, 

Echo his praise agen, 
^'EoderighVich Alpine dhu ho! ieroe!" ao 



XX 



Proudly our pibroch has thrill'd in Glen Fruin, 

And Bannochar's groans to our slogan replied; 
Glen Luss and Eoss-dhu, they are smoking in ruin, 
And the best of Loch-Lomond lie dead on her 
side. 

Widow and Saxon maid 5 

Long shall lament our raid, 
Think of Clan- Alpine with fear and with woe ; 
Lennox and Leven-glen 
. Shake when they hear agen 
*'Eoderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe!" lo 

Row, vassals, row, for the pride of the Highlands ! 

Stretch to your oars, for the ever-green Pine! 
0, thab the rose-bud that graces yon islands. 
Were wreathed in a garland around him to twine ! 

that some seedling gem, is 

Worthy such noble stem. 
Honour 'd and bless 'd in their shadow might 
groiv ; 



CANTO SECOND 105 

Loud should Clan-Alpine then 
Eing from her deepmost glen, 
20 "Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe!'' 

XXI 

With all her joyful female band, 
Had Lady Margaret sought the strand. 
Loose on the breeze their tresses flew, 
And high their snowy arms they threw, 

5 As echoing back with shrill acclaim, 
And chorus wild, the Chieftain's name; 
While, prompt to please, with mother's art^ 
The darling passion of his heart. 
The Dame called Ellen to the strand, 

10 To greet her kinsman ere he land: 

''Come, loiterer, come! a Douglas thou, 
And shun to wreathe a victor's brow?"— 
Reluctantly and slow, the maid 
The unwelcome summoning obey'd, 

15 And, when a distant bugle rung. 
In the mid-path aside she sprung : — 
"List, Allan-bane! From mainland cast 
I hear my father's signal blast. 
Be ours," she cried, "the skiff to guide, 

20 And waft him from the mountain side." 
Then, like a sunbeam, swift and bright, 
She darted to her shallop light. 
And, eagerly while Roderick scann'd, 
For her dear form, his mother's band. 



u 



106 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

The Islet far behind her lay, S5 

And she had landed in the bay, 

XXII 

Some feelings are to mortals given, 

With less of earth in them than heaven t 

And if there be a human tear 

From passion's dross refined and clear, 

A tear so limpid and so meek, 5 

It would not stain an angel's cheek, 

'Tis that which pious fathers shed 

Upon a duteous daughter's head! 

And as the Douglas to his breast 

His darling Ellen closely press 'd, lo 

Such holy drops her tresses steep 'd, 

Though 'twas an hero's eye that weep'do 

Ifor while on Ellen's faltering tongue 

Her filial welcomes crowded hung, 

Mark'd she, that fear (affection's proof) is 

Still held a graceful youth aloof ; 

Iho ! not till Douglas named his name, 

Although the youth was Malcolm Graeme. 

XXIII 

Allan, with wistful look the while, 

Mark'd Eoderick landing on the isle; 

His master piteously he eyed, 

Then gazed upon the Chieftain's pride, 

Then dash'd, with hasty hand, away s 

""^rom his dimm'd eye the gathering spray; 



CANTO SECOND 107 

And Douglas, as his hand he laid 

On Malcolm's shoulder, kindly said, 

/* Canst thou, young friend, no meaning spy 

10 In my poor follower's glistening eye? 
I'll tell thee: — he recalls the day. 
When in my praise ho led the lay 
O'er the arch'd gate of Bothwell proud. 
While many a minstrel answer'd loud, 

15 When Percy's Norman pennon, won 
In bloody field, before me shone, 
And twice ten knights, the least a name 
As mighty as yon Chief may claim, 
Gracing my pomp, behind me came. 

2CV Yet trust me, Malcolm, not so proud 
Was I of all that marshall'd crowd, 
Though the waned crescent own'd my might, 
And in my train troop'd lord and knight, 
Though Blant3n:'e hymn'd her holiest lays, 

^^ And Bothwell's bards flung back my praise, 
As when this old man's silent tear, 
And this poor maid's affection dear, 
A welcome give more kind and true, 
Than aught my better fortunes knew. f 

30 Forgive, my friend, a father's boast, 
0! it out-beggars all I lost!" 

XXIV 

Delightful praise ! — like summer rose, 
That brighter in the dew-drop glows, 



108 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

The bashful maiden's cheek appear 'd, 

For Douglas spoke, and Malcolm heard. 

The flush of shame-faced joy to hide, 5 

The hounds, the hawk, her cares divide; 

The loved caresses of the maid 

The dogs with crouch and whimper paid; 

And, at her whistle, on her hand 

The falcon took her favourite stand, w 

Closed his dark wing, relax'd his eye, 

Nor, though unhooded, sought to fly. 

And, trust, while in such guise she stood, 

Like fabled Goddess of the wood. 

That if a father's partial thought 16 

O'erweigh'd her worth, and beauty aught, 

Well might the lover's judgment fail 

To balance with a juster scale ; 

For with each secret glance he stole, 

The fond enthusiast sent his soul. m 



XXV 

Of stature tall, and slender frame, 
But firmly knit, was Malcolm Graeme. 
The belted plaid and tartan hose 
Did ne'er more graceful limbs disclose; 
His flaxen hair, of sunny hue, 
Curl'd closely round his bonnet blue. 
Train 'd to the chase, his eagle eye 
The ptarmigan in snow could spy : 



CANTO SECOND 109 

Each pass, by mountain, lake, and heath, 

10 He knew, through Lennox and Menteith ; 
Vain was the bound of dark-brown doe. 
When Malcolm bent his sounding bow. 
And scarce that doe, though wing'd with fear^ 
Outstripp'd in speed the mountaineer: 

15 Eight up Ben-Lomond could he press. 
And not a sob his toil confess. 
His form accorded with a mind 
Lively and ardent, frank and kind; 
A blither heart, till Ellen came, 

20 Did never love nor sorrow tame ; 
It danced as lightsome in his breast, 
As play'd the feather on his crest. 
Yet friends, who nearest knew the youth, 
His scorn of wrong, his zeal for truth, 

25 And bards, who saw his features bold. 
When kindled by the tales of old. 
Said, were that youth to manhood grown, 
Not long should Roderick Dhu's renown 
Be foremost voiced by mountain fame, 

80 But quail to that of Malcolm Grseme. 

XXVI 

Now back they wend their watery way, 
And, "0 my sire!" did Ellen say, 
''Why urge thy chase so far astray? 
And why so late return'd? And why"— 
5 The rest was in her speaking eye. 



110 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

*'My child, the chase I follow far, 

'Tis mimicry of noble war ; 

And with that gallant pastime reft 

Were all of Douglas I have left. 

I met young Malcolm as I stray'd to 

Far eastward, in Glenfinlas' shade, 

iVor stray'd I safe; for, all around. 

Hunters and horsemen scour 'd the ground. 

This youth, though still a royal ward, 

Risk'd life and land to be my guard, x? 

And through the passes of the wood 

Guided my steps, not unpursued; 

And Eoderick shall his welcome make, 

Despite old spleen, for Douglas' sake. 

Then must he seek Strath -Endrick glen, 80 

Nor peril aught for me agen." 

XXVII 

Sir Eoderick, who to meet them came, 

Redden'd at sight of Malcolm Graeme, 

Yet, not in action, word, or eye, 

Fail'd aught in hospitality. , 

In talk and sport they whiled away s 

The morning of that summer day; 

But at high noon a courier light 

Held secret parley with the knight. 

Whose moody aspect soon declared. 

That evil were the news he heard. lo 

Deep thought seem'd toiling in his head; 



CANTO SECOND 111 

Yet was the evening banquet made, 

Ere he assembled round the flame, 

His mother, Douglas, and the Graeme, 
15 And Ellen, too; then cast around 

His eyes, then fix'd them on the ground, 

As studying phrase that might avail 

Best to convey unpleasant tale. 

Long with his dagger's hilt he play'd, 
20 Then raised his haughty brow, and said: — 

XXVIII 

''Short be my speech; — nor time affords, 
Nor my plain temper, glozing words. 
Kinsman and father, — if such name 
Douglas vouchsafe to Eoderick's claim; 

5 Mine honour'd mother: — Ellen — why. 
My cousin, turn away thine eye? — 
An'd Graeme; in whom I hope to know 
Full soon a noble friend or foe, 
When age shall give thee thy command, 

10 And leading in thy native land, — 
List all! — The King's vindictive pride 
Boasts to have tamed the Border -side. 
Where chiefs, with hound and hawk who came 
To share their monarch's silvan game, 

15 Themselves in bloody toils were snared ; 
And when the banquet they prepared. 
And wide their loyal portals flung. 
O'er their own gateway struggling hung. 



113 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Loud cries their blood from Meggat's mead, 

From Yarrow braes, and banks of Tweed, 20 

Where the lone streams of Ettrick glide, 

And from the silver Teviot's side; 

The dales, where martial clans did ride. 

Are now one sheep-walk, waste and wide. 

This tyrant of the Scottish throne, 35 

So faithless, and so ruthless known, 

Now hither comes ; his end the same, 

The same pretext of silvan game. 

What grace for Highland Chiefs, judge ye 

By fate of Border chivalry. 30 

Yet more ; amid Glenfinlas green, 

Douglas, thy stately form was seen. 

This by espial sure I know : 

Your counsel in the streight I show, 



>> 



XXIX 

Ellen and Margaret fearfully 

Sought comfort in each other's eye. 

Then turn'd their ghastly look, each one, 

This to her sire, that to her son. 

The hasty colour went and came 5 

In the bold cheek of Malcolm Graeme ; 

But from his glance it well appear 'd, 

'Twas but for Ellen that he fear'd; 

While, sorrowful, but undismay'd. 

The Douglas thus his counsel said: — 10 



CANTO SECOND 11^ 

^' Brave Eoderick, though the tempest roar^ 

It may but thunder and pass o'er; 

Nor will I here remain an hour, 

To draw the lightning on thy bower ; 
15 For well thou know'st, at this grey head 

The royal bolt were fiercest sped. 

For thee, who, at thy King's command, 

Canst aid him with a gallant band, 

Submission, homage, humbled pride, 
20 Shall turn the Monarch's wrath aside. 

Poor remnants of the Bleeding Heart, 

Ellen and I will seek, apart, 

The refuge of some forest cell. 

There, like the hunted quarry, dwell, 
25 Till on the mountain and the moor, 

The stern pursuit be pass'd and o'er."«- 



XXX 

*'No, by mine honom*," Eoderick said, 

*'So help me Heaven, and my good blade! 

No, never! Blasted be yon Pine, 

My fathers' ancient crest and mine, 

If from its shade in danger part 

The lineage of the Bleeding Heart ! 

Hear my blunt speech : Grant me this maid 

To wife, thy counsel to mine aid ; 

To Douglas, leagued with Eoderick Dhu, 

Will friends and allies flock enow ; 



il4 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Like cause of doubt, distrust, and grief, 

Will bind to us each Western Cbief. 

When the loud pipes my bridal tell, 

The Links of Forth shall hear the knell, 

The guards shall start in Stirling's porch ; 16 

And, when I light the nuptiaL torch, 

A thousand villages in flames 

Shall scare the slumbers of King James ! 

— Nay, Ellen, blench not thus away, 

And, mother, cease these signs, I pray; 2Ci 

I meant not all my heart might say. — 

Small need of inroad, or of fight. 

When the sage Douglas may unite 

l!:iich mountain clan in friendly band, 

To guard the passes of their land, ^35 

Till the foil'd king, from pathless glen, 

Shall bootless turn him home agen," 

XXXI 

There are who have, at midnight hour, 

[n slumber scaled a dizzy tower, 

And, on the verge that beetled o'er ^ 

The ocean tide's incessant roar, 

Dream'd calmly out their dangerous dream, s 

Till waken'd by the morning beam; 

When, dazzled by the eastern glow, 

Such startler cast his glance below. 

And saw unmeasured depth around, 

And heard unintermitted sounds to 



CANTO SECOND 116 

And thought the battled fence so frail, 

It waved like cobweb in the gale ; — 

Amid his senses' giddy wheel. 

Did he not desperate impulse feel, 
16 Headlong to plunge himself below, 

And meet the worst his fears foreshow?— 

Thus, Ellen, dizzy and astound. 

As sudden ruin yawn'd around. 

By crossing terrors wildly toss 'd, 
'-20 Still for the Douglas fearing most. 

Could scarce the desperate thought withstand. 

To buy his safety with her hand. 



XXXII 

Such purpose dread could Malcolm spy 
In Ellen's quivering lip and eye. 
And eager rose to speak — but ere 
His tongue could hurry forth his fear, 

5 Had Douglas mark'd the hectic strife. 
Where death seem'd combating with life; 
For to her cheek, in feverish flood. 
One instant rush'd the throbbing blood, 
Then ebbing back, with sudden sway, 

10 Left its domain as wan as clay. 

''Koderick, enough! enough!'' he cried^ 
''My daughter cannot be thy bride; 
Not that the blush to wooer dear, 
Nor paleness that of maiden fear. 



116 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

It may not be — forgive her, Chief, » 

Nor hazard aught for our relief. 

Against his sovereign, Douglas ne'er 

Will level a rebellious spear. 

'Twas I that taught his youthful hand 

To rein a steed and wield a brand; 80 

I see him yet, the princely boy! 

Not Ellen more my pride and joy; 

I love him still, despite my wrongs, 

By hasty wrath, and slanderous tongues. 

seek the grace you well may find, 25 

Without a cause to mine combined." 



XXXIII 

Twice through the hall the Chieftain strode; 
The waving of his tartans broad, 
And darkened brow, where wounded pride 
With ire and disappointment vied, 
Seem'd, by the torch's gloomy light, 
Like the ill Demon of the night. 
Stooping his pinions' shadowy sway 
Upon the knighted pilgrim's way: 
But, um-equited Love! thy dart 
Plunged deepest its envenom'd smart. 
And Koderick, with thine anguish stung, 
At length the hand of Douglas wrung. 
While eyes, that mock'd at tears before^ 
With bitter drops were running o'er. 



CANTO SECOND 11? 

IS The death-pangs of long-cherish 'd hope 
Scarce in th b ample breast had scope, 
But, struggling with his spirit proud, 
Convulsive heaved its chequer 'd shroud, 
While every sob — so mute were all — 

^ Was heard distinctly through the hall. 
The son's despair, the mother's look, 
111 might the gentle Ellen brook ; 
She rose, and to her side there came. 
To aid her parting steps, the Graeme. 

XXXIV 

Then Eoderick from the Douglas broke — 
As flashes flame through sable smoke. 
Kindling its wreaths, long, dark, and low. 
To one broad blaze of ruddy glow, 

5 So the deep anguish of despair 
Burst, in fierce jealousy, to air. 
With stalwart grasp his hand he laid 
On Malcolm's breast and belted plaid: 
''Back, beardless boy!" he sternly said, 

^Q "Back, minion! hold'st thou thus at naught 
The lesson I so lately taught? 
This roof, the Douglas, and that maid, 
Thank thou for punishment delay'd." 
Eager as greyhound on his game 

15 Fiercely with Roderick grappled Graeme. 
''Perish my name, if aught afford 
Its Chieftain's safety save his sword!" 



118 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Thus as they strove, their desperate hand 

Griped to the dagger or the brand, 

And death had been — but Douglas rose, ao 

And thrust between the struggling foes 

His giant strength: — ''Chieftains, forego! 

I hold the first who strikes, my foe.— 

Madmen, forbear your frantic jar! 

What! is the Douglas fall'n so far, 2t 

His daughter's hand is doom'd the spoil 

Of such dishonourable broil!" 

Sullen and slowly they unclasp, 

As struck with shame, their desperate grasp, 

And each upon his rival glared, se 

With foot advanced, and blade half bared. 



XXXV 

Ere yet the brands aloft were flung 

Margaret on Roderick's mantle hung, 

And Malcolm heard his Ellen's scream, 

As falter'd through terrific dream. 

Then Roderick plunged in sheath his sword 5 

And veil'd his wrath in scornful word: 

"Rest safe till morning; pity t'were 

Such cheek should feel the midnight air ! 

Then mayest thou to James Stuart tell, 

Roderick will keep the lake and fell, I© 

Nor lackey, with his freeborn clan, 

The pageant pomp of earthly man. 



CANTO SECOND 119 

More would he of Clan-Alpine know, 

Ttiou canst our strength and passes show. — 
15 Malise, what ho!" — his henchman came; 

''Give our safe-conduct to the Graeme." 

Young Malcolm answered, calm and bold, 

*'Fear nothing for thy favourite hold; 

The spot, an angel deigned to grace, 
80 Is bless 'd, though robbers haunt the place. 

Thy churlish courtesy for those 

Eeserve, who fear to be thy foes. 

As safe to me the mountain way 

At midnight as in blaze of day, 
25 Though with his boldest at his back 

Even Roderick Dhu beset the track. — 

Brave Douglas, — ^lovely Ellen, — nay, 

Nought here of parting will I say. 

Earth does not hold a lonesome glen, 
80 So secret, but we meet agen. — 

Chieftain! we too shall find an. hour,"- 

He said, and left the tsilvan bower. 



XXXVI 

Old Allan foUow'd to the strand, 
(Such was the Douglas's command,) 
And anxious told, how, on the morn, 
The stern Sir Roderick deep had sworn, 
The Fiery Cross should circle o'er 
Dale, glen, and valley, down, and moor. 



120 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Much were the peril to the Grraeme, 

From those who to the signal came; 

Far up the lake 'twere safest land, 

Himself would row him to the strand. lo 

He gave his counsel to the wind, 

While Malcolm did, unheeding, bind, 

Eound dirk and pouch and broadsword rolPd, 

His ample plaid in tighten'd fold, 

And stripp'd his limbs to such array, . 15 

As best might suit the watery way,— 



XXXVII 



Then spoke abrupt: "Farewell to thee, 

Pattern of old fidelity!" 

The Minstrel's hand he kindly press'd,— =• 

"0 ! could I point a place of rest ! 

My sovereign holds in ward my land, g 

My uncle leads my vassal band ; 

To tame his foes, his friends to aid, 

Poor Malcolm has but heart and blade. 

Yet, if there be one faithful Graeme, 

Who loves the chieftain of his name, tD 

Not long shall honour 'd Douglas dwell, 

Like hunted stag in mountain cell ; 

Nor, ere yon pride-swoU'n robber dare,— 

I may not give the rest to air ! 

Tell Roderick Dhu, I owed him nought, ifi 

Not the poor service of a boat. 



CANTO SECOND 131 

To waft me to yon mountain-side." 

Then plunged he in the flashing tide. 

Bold o'er the flood his head he bore, 
20 And stoutly steer 'd him from the shore; 

And Allan strain'd his anxious eye, 

Far 'mid the lake his form to spy. 

Darkening across each puny wave. 

To which the moon her silver gave, 
25 Fast as the cormorant could skim, 

The swimmer plied each active limb ; 

Then landing in the moonlight dell, 

Loud shouted of his weal to tell. 

The Minstrel heard the far halloo, 
30 And joyful from the shore withdrew 



CANTO THIRD , 



THE GATHERING 
I 

Time rolls his ceaseless course. The race of yore, 

Who danced our infancy upon their knee, 
And told our marvelling boyhood legends store, 

Of their strange ventures happ'd by land or sea, 
How are they blotted from the things that be ! 5 

How few, all weak and wither'd of their force. 
Wait on the verge of dark eternity, 

Like stranded wrecks, the tide returning hoarse. 
To sweep them from our sight ! Time rolls his 
ceaseless course. 

Yet live there still who can remember well, i© 

How, when a mountain chief his bugle blew, 
Both field and forest, dingle, cliff, and dell, 

And solitary heath, the signal knew ; 
And fast the faithful clan around him drew, 

What time the warning note was keenly wound, 15 
What time aloft their kindred banner flew, 

While clamorous war-pipes yelPd the gathering 

sound, 

And while the Fiery Cross glanced, like a meteor, 

round. 

12? 



CANTO THIRD . 123 

II 

The Summer dawn's reflected hue 

To purple changed Loch Katrine blue; 

Mildly and soft the western breeze 

Just kiss'd the lake, just stirr'd the trees, 
5 And the pleased lake, like maiden coy, 

Trembled but dimpled not for joy; 

The mountain-shadows on her breast 

Were neither broken nor at rest; 

In bright uncertainty they lie, 
10 Like future joys to Fancy's eye. 

The water-lily to the light 

Her chalice rear'd of silver bright; 

The doe awoke, and to the lawn, 

Begemm'd with dew-drops, led her fawn; 
15 The grey mist left the mountain side. 

The torrent show'd its glistening pride; 

Invisible in flecked sky. 

The lark sent down her revelry ; 

The blackbird and the speckled thrush 
20 Good-morrow gave from brake and bush; 

In answer coo'd the cushat dove 

Her notes of peace, and rest, and love* 

III 

No thought of peace, no thought of rest, 
Assuaged the storm in Roderick's breast. 
With sheathed broadsword in his hand. 
Abrupt he paced the islet strand, 



124 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

And eyed the rising sun, and laid 
His hand on his impatient blade. 
Beneath a rock, his vassals' care 
Was prompt the ritual to prepare, 
With deep and deathful meaning fraughtj 
For such Antiquity had taught 
Was preface meet, ere yet abroad 
The Cross of Fire should take its road. 
The shrinking band stood oft aghast 
At the impatient glance he cast ; — 
Such glance the mountain eagle threw, 
As, from the cliffs of Benvenue, 
She spread her dark sails on the wind, 
And, high in middle heaven reclined, 
With her broad shadow on the lake, 
Silenced the warblers of the brake. 

IV 

A heap of wither'd boughs was piled. 
Of juniper and rowan wild, 
Mingled with shivers from the oak, 
Kent by the lightning's recent stroke. 
Brian, the Hermit, by it stood, 
Barefooted, in his frock and hood. 
His grisled beard and matted hair 
Obscured a visage of despair ; 
His naked arms and legs, seam'd o'er. 
The scars of frantic penance bore. 
That monk, of savage form and face, 
The impending danger of his race 



CANTO THIRD 135 

Had drawn from deepest solitude, 
• Far in Benharrow's bosom rude. 
15 Not his the mien of Christian priest, 

But Druid's, from the grave released. 

Whose harden 'd heart and eye might brook 

On human sacrifice to look ; 

And much, 'twas said, of heathen lore 
20 Mix'd in the charms he mutter'd o'er. 

The hallow'd creed gave only worse 

And deadlier emphasis of curse ; 

No peasant sought that Hermit's prayer, 

His cave the pilgrim shunn'd with care, 
25 The eager huntsman knew his bound. 

And in mid chase call'd off his hound; 

Or if, in lonely glen or strath, 

The desert-dweller met his path, 

He pray'd, and sign'd the cross between, 
30 While terror took devotion's mien. 

V 

Of Brian's birth strange tales were told. 

His mother watch'd a midnight fold. 

Built deep within a dreary glen, 

Where scatter 'd lay the bones of men, 
5 In some forgotten battle slain, 

And bleach 'd by drifting wind and rain. 

It might have tamed a warrior's heart, 

To view such mockery of his art ! 

The knot-grass fetter 'd there the hand, 
10 Which once could burst an iron band ; 



r26 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Beneath the broad and ample bone, 

That buckler'd heart to fear unknown, 

A. feeble and a timorous guest, 

The field-fare framed her lowly nest; 

Ihere the slow blind-worm left his slime S^ 

On the fleet limbs that mock'd at time; 

And there, too, lay the leader's skull, 

Still wreathed with chaplet, flush'd and full, 

For heath-bell with her purple bloom, 

Supplied the bonnet and the plume. , SO 

All night, in this sad glen, the maid 

Sate, shrouded in her mantlets shade: 

She said, no shepherd sought ber side, 

No hunter's hand her snood untied, 

Yet ne'er again to braid her hair g5 

The virgin snood did Alice wear ; 

Gone was her maiden glee and sporty 

Her maiden gndle all too short, 

Nor sought she, from that fatal night, 

Or holy church or blessed rite, 3C 

But lock'd her secret in her breast, 

And died in travail, unconfess'd. 

VI 

Alone, among his young compeers, 

Was Brian from his infant years ; 

A moody and heart-broken boy, 

Estranged from sympathy and joy. 

Bearing each taunt which careless tongue a 

On his mysterious lineage flung. 



CANTO THIRD 127 

Whole nights he spent by moonlight pale. 

To wood and stream his hap to waiL 

Till, frantic, he as truth received 
10 What of his birth the crowd believed, 

And sought, in mist and meteor fire, 

To meet and know his Phantom Sire! 

In vain, to soothe his wayward fate, 

The cloister oped her pitying gate; 
15 In vain, the learning of the age 

Unclasp'd the sable-letter 'd page; 

Even in its treasures he could find 

Food for the fever of his mind. 

Eager he read whatever tells 
30 Of magic, cabala, and spells, 

And every dark pursuit allied 

To curious and presumptuous pride ; 

Till with fired brain and nerves o'erstrung^ 

And heart with mystic horrors Avrung, 
25 Desperate he sought Benharrow's den, 

And hid him from the haunts of men. 

VII 

The desert gave him visions wild. 
Such as might suit the spectre's child. 
Where with black cliffs the torrents toil. 
He watch 'd the wheeling eddies boil, 
5 Tilly from their foam, his dazzled eyes 
Beheld the Eiver Demon rise; 
The mountain mist took form and limbj 
Of noontide hag, or goblin grim ; 



128 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

The midniglit wind came wild and dread, 

Sweird with the voices of the dead; 

Far on the future battle-heath 

His eyes beheld the ranks of death : 

Thus the lone Seer, from mankind hurPd, 

Shaped forth a disembodied world. 

One lingering sympathy of mind 

Still bound him to the mortal kind; 

The only parent he could claim 

Of ancient Alpine lineage came. 

Late had he heard, in prophet's dream, 

The fatal Ben-Shie's boding scream; 

Sounds, too, had come in midnight blast. 

Of charging steeds, careering fast 

Along Benharrow's shingly side, 

Where mortal horseman ne'er might ride; 

The thunderbolt had split the pine,— 

All augur 'd ill to Alpine's line. 

He girt his loins, and came to show 

The signals of impending woe. 

And now stood prompt to bless or ban. 

As bade the Chieftain of his clan. 



VIII 

'Twas all prepared ; — and from the rock, 
A goat, the patriarch of the flock, 
Before the kindling pile was laid. 
And pierced by Eoderick's ready blade. 



CANTO THIRD 129 

5 Patient the sickening victim eyed 

The life-blood ebb in crimson tide, 

Down his clogg'd beard and shaggy limb, 

Till darkness glazed his eyeballs dim. 

The grisly priest, with murmuring prayer, 
A slender crosslet form'd with care, 

A cubit's length in measure due; 

The shaft and limbs were rods of yew, 

Whose parents in Inch-Cailliach w^ave 

Their shadows o'er Clan-Alpine's grave, 
5 And, answering Lomond's breezes deep, 

Soothe many a chieftain's endless sleep. 

The Cross, thus form'd, he held on high, 

With wasted hand, and haggard eye. 

And strange and mingled feelings woke, 
> While his anathema he spoke. 



IX 



*'Woe to the clansman, who shall view 
This symbol of sepulchral yew, 
Forgetful that its branches grew 
Where weep the heavens their holiest dew 

On Alpine's dwelling low! 
Deserter of his Chieftain's trust. 
He ne'er shall mingle with their dust, 
But, from his sires and kindred thrust. 
Each clansman's execration just 

Shall doom him wrath and woe." 



180 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

He paused ; — the word the vassals took, 
With forward step and fiery look, 
On high their naked brands they shook, 
Their clattering targets wildly strook ; 
< And first in murmur low, i6 

Then, like the billow in his course. 
That far to seaward finds his source, 
And flings to shore his muster 'd force, 
Burst, with loud roar, their answer noarse, 

"Woe to the traitor, woe!" so 

Ben-an's grey scalp the accents knew. 
The joyous wolf from cover drew. 
The exulting eagle scream'd afar, — 
They knew the voice of Alpine's war. 



The shout was hush'd on lake and fell, 

The Monk resumed his mutter'd spell: 

Dismal and low its accents came. 

The while he scathed the Cross with flame : 

And the few words that reach 'd the air, g 

Although the holiest name was there, 

Had more of blasphemy than prayer. 

But when he shook above the crowd 

Its kindled points, he spoke aloud: — 

*'Woe to the wretch, who fails to rear le 

At this dread sign the ready spear ! 

For, as the flames this symbol sear, 

His home, the refuge of his fear, 



CANTO THIED 131 

A kindred fate shall know ; 
15 Far o'er its roof the volumed flame 
Clan-Alpine's vengeance shall proclaim, 
While maids and matrons on his name 
Shall call down wretchedness and shame, 
And infamy and woe." 
20 Then rose the cry of females, shrill 
As goss-hawk's whistle on the hill, 
Denouncing misery and ill, 
Mingled with childhood's babbling trill 
Of curses stammer 'd slow; 
25 Answering, with imprecation dread, 

"Sunk be his home in embers red! 
' And cursed be the meanest shed 

That e'er shall hide the houseless head, 
We doom to want and woe!" 
30 A sharp and shrieking echo gave, 
Coir-Uriskin, thy goblin cave ! 
And the grey pass where birches wave, 
On Beala-nam-bo. 



XI 



Then deeper paused the priest anew. 
And hard his labouring breath he drew. 
While, with set teeth and clenched hand, 
And eyes that glow'd like fiery brand. 
He meditated curse more dread, 
And deadlier, on the clansman's head. 



133 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Who, summon 'd to his chieftain's aid 
The signal saw and disobey'd. 
The crosslet's points of sparkling wood, 
He quench'd among the bubbling blood. 
And, as again the sign he rear'd. 
Hollow and hoarse his voice was heard : 
"When flits this Cross from man to man, 
Vich-Alpine's summons to his clan, 
Burst be the ear that fails to heed ! 
Palsied the foot that shans to speed! 
May ravens tear the careless eyes, 
Wolves make the coward heart their prize ! 
As sinks that blood-stream in the earth, 
So may his heart's blood drench his hearth! 
As dies in hissing gore the spark, 
Quench thou his light, Destruction dark! 
And be the grace to him denied, 
Bought by this sign to all beside!" 
He ceased; no echo gave agen 
The murmur of the deep Amen. 



XII 

Then Eoderick, with impatient look. 
From Brian's hand the symbol took: 
"Speed, Malise, speed!" he said, and gave 
The crosslet to his henchman brave. 
"The muster-place be Lanrick mead — 
Instant the time— speed, Malise, speed!" 



CANTC THIRD 135 

Like heath-bird, when the hawks pursue, 

A barge across Loch Katrine flew ; 

High stood the henchman on the prow, 
10 So rapidly the barge-men row, 

The bubbles, where they launched the boat, 

Were all unbroken and afloat, 

Dancing in foam and ripple still. 

When it had near'd the mainland hill; 
15 And from the silver beach's side 

Still was the prow three fathom wide, 

When lightly bounded to the land 

The messenger of blood and brand. 



XIII 

Speed, Malise, speed I the dun deer's hide 
On fleeter foot was never tied. 
Speed, Malise, speed! such cause of haste 
Thine active sinews never braced. 

5 Bend 'gainst the steepy hill thy breast. 
Burst down like torrent from its crest ; 
With short and springing footstep pass 
The trembling bog and false morass ; 
• Across the brook like roebuck bound, 

10 And thread the brake like questing hound ; 
The crag is high, the scaur is deep, 
Yet shrink not from the desperate leap: 
Parch 'd are thy burning lips and brow. 
Yet by the fountain pause not now^ 



134 THE LADY Oj^" THE LAKE 

Herald of battle, fate, and fear, 

Stretch onward in thy fleet career ! 

The wounded hind thou track 'st not now, 

Pursuest not maid through greenwood bough, 

Nor pliest thou now thy flying pace, 

With rivals in the mountain race; 

But danger, death, and warrior deed. 

Are in thy course — speed, Malise, speed! 



XIV 



Fast as the fatal symbol flies, 

In arms the huts and hamlets rise ; 

Prom winding glen, from upland brown, 

They pour'd each hardy tenant down. 

Nor slack'd the messenger his pace; 5 

He show'd the sign, he named the place, 

And, pressing forward like the wind. 

Left clamour and surprise behind. 

The fisherman forsook the strand. 

The swarthy smith took dirk and brand ; k 

With changed cheer, the mower blithe 

Left in the half -cut swathe the scythe ; 

The herds without a keeper stray'd, 

The plough was in mid- furrow staid. 

The falc'ner toss'd his hawk away, 16 

The hunter left the stag at bay ; 

Prompt at the signal of alarms, 

Each son of Alpine rush'd to arms: 



CANTO THIRD 135 



So swept the tumult and affray 
20 Along the margin of Achray. 

Alas, thou lovely lake! that e'er 

Thy banks should echo sounds of fear! 

The rocks, the bosky thickets, sleep 

So stilly on thy bosom deep, 
25 The lark's blithe carol, from the cloud, 

Seems for the scene too gaily loud. 



XV 



Speed, Malise, speed! the lake is past, 
Duncraggan's huts appear at last, 
And peep, like moss-grown rocks, half seen, 
Half hidden in the copse so gi'een; 

5 There mayst thou rest, thy labour done, 
Their Lord shall speed the signal on. — 
As stoops the hawk upon his prey. 
The henchman shot him down the way. 
— What woeful accents load the gale? 

10 The funeral yell, the female wail! 
A gallant hunter's sport is o'er, 
A valiant warrior fights no more. 
Who, in the battle or the chase. 
At Eoderick's side shall fill his place! — 

15 Within the hall, where torches' ray 
Supplies the excluded beams of day, 
Lies Duncan on his lowly bier, 
And o'er him streams his widow's tear. 



136 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

His stripling son stands mournful by, 
His youngest weeps, but knows not why; 
The village maids and matrons round 
The dismal coronach resound. 



XVI 

CORO:^^ACH 

He is gone on the mountain, 

He is lost to the forest, 
Like a summer-dried fountain. 

When our need was the sorest. 
The font, reappearing, 

From the rain-drops shall borrow, 
But to us comes no cheering. 

To Duncan no morrow ! 
The hand of the reaper 

Takes the ears that are hoary, 
But the voice of the weeper 

Wails manhood in glory. 
The autumn winds rushing 

Waft the leaves that are searest. 
But our flower was in flushing. 

When blighting was nearest. 
Fleet foot on the correi, 

Sage counsel in cumber, 
Red hand in the foray, 

How sound is thy slumber ! 



CANTO THIRD 137 . 

Like the dew on the mountain, 

Like the foam on the river, 
Like the bubble on the fountain 

Thou art gone, and for ever! 

XVII 

See Stumah, who, the bier beside. 
His master's corpse with wonder eyed, 
Poor Stumah ! whom his least halloo 
Could send like lightning o'er the dew^ 
Bristles his crest, and points his ears, 
As if some stranger step he hears. 
'Tis not a mourner's muffled tread, 
Who comes to sorrow o'er the dead, 
But headlong haste, or deadly fear, 
Urge the precipitate career. 
All stand aghast : — unheeding all, 
The henchman bursts into the hall ; 
Before the dead man's bier he stood; 
Held forth the Cross besmear'd with blood; 
"The muster-place is Lanrick mead; 
Speed forth the signal! clansmen, speed!'* 

XVIII 

Angus, the heir of Duncan's line. 
Sprung forth and seized the fatal sign. 
In haste the stripling to his side 
His father'? dirk and broadsword tied;; 



138 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

But when lie saw his mother's eye 5 

Watch him in speechless agony, 

Back to her open'd arms he flew, 

Press 'd on her lips a fond adieu — = 

" ilas!" she sobb'd, — "and yet be gone, 

And speed thee forth, like Duncan's son!" lo 

One look he cast upon the bier, 

Dash'd from his eye the gathering tear, 

Breathed deep to clear his labouring breast, 

And toss'd aloft his bonnet crest, 

Then, like the high-bred colt, when, freed, 15 

First he essays his fire and speed, 

He vanish 'd, and o'er moor and moss 

Sped forward with the Fiery Cross. 

Suspended was the widow's tear. 

While yet his footsteps she could hear ; 20 

And when she mark'd the henchman's eye 

Wet with unwonted sympathy, 

''Kinsman," she said, "his race is run, 

That should have sped thine errand on ; 

The oak has fall'n, — the sapling bough m 

Is all Duncraggan's shelter now. 

Yet trust I well, his duty done, 

The orphan's God will guard my son. — 

And you, in many a danger true. 

At Duncan's hest your blades that drew, 30 

To arms, and guard that orphan's head! 

Let babes and women wail the dead." 

Then weapon-clang, and martial call, 

Resounded through the funeral hall. 



CANTO THIRD 139 

35 While from the walls the attendant band 
Snatch'd sword and targe, with hurried hand; 
And short and flitting energy 
Glanced from the mourner's sunken eye, 
As if the sounds to warrior dear, 

40 Might rouse her Duncan from his bier. 
But faded soon that borrowed force ; 
Grief claim'd his right, and tears their course- 

XIX 

Benledi saw the Cross of Fire, 

It glanced like lightning up Strath-Ire. 

O'er dale and hill the summons flew, 

Nor rest nor pause young Angus knew; 
5 The tear that gather 'd in his eye - 

He left the mountain breeze to dry ; 

Until, where Teith's young waters roll. 

Betwixt him and a wooded knoll, 

That graced the sable strath with green, 
10 The chapel of St. Bride was seen. 

Swoln was the stream, remote the bridge, 

But Angus paused not on the edge ; 

Though the dark waves danced dizzily, • 

Though reel'd his sympathetic eye, 
15 He dash'd amid the torrent's roar: 

His right hand high the crosslet bore. 

His left the pole-axe grasp'd, to guide 

And stay his footing in the tide. 

He stumbled twice — the foam splash'd high; 
20 With hoarser swell the stream raced by; 



140 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

And had he faU'n, — for ever there, 
Farewell Duncraggan's orphan heir! 
But still, as if in parting life, 
Firmer he grasp'd the Cross of strife, 
Until the opposing bank he gain'd. 
And up the chapel pathway strain 'd. 

XX 

A blithesome rout, that morning tide, 
Had sought the chapel of St. Bride. 
Her troth Tombea's Mary gave 
To Norman, heir of Armandave. 
And, issuing from the Gothic arch. 
The bridal now resumed their march. 
In rude, but glad procession, came 
Bonneted sire and coif -clad dame ; 
And plaided youth, with jest and jeer. 
Which snooded maiden would not hear: 
And children, that, unwitting why, 
Lent the gay shout their shrilly cry; 
And minstrels, that in measures vied 
Before the young and bonny bride, 
WhoSe downcast eye and cheek disclose 
The tear and blush of morning rose. 
With virgin step, and bashful hand. 
She held the 'kerchief's snowy band; 
The gallant bridegroom, by her side. 
Beheld his prize with victor's pride. 
And the glad mother in her ear 
Was closely whispering word of cheer. 



CANTO THIRD 14$ 

XXI 

Who meets them at the chmxhyard gate? 

The messenger of fear and fate ! 

Haste in his hurried accent lies, 

And grief is swimming in his eyes. 
6 All dripping from the recent flood, 

Panting and trayel-soil'd he stood, 

The fatal sign of fire and sword 

Held forth, and spoke the appointed word: 

"The muster -place is Lamuck mead; 
10 Speed forth the signal ! Korman, speed'!" 

And must he change so soon the hand, 

Just link'd to his by holy band, 

For the fell Cross of blood and brand? 

And must the day, so blithe that rose, 
15 And promised rapture in the close. 

Before its setting hour, divide 

The bridegroom from the plighted bride'^ 

fatal doom! — it must! it must! 

Clan-Alpine's cause, her Chieftain's trust, 
20 Her summons dread, brook no delay ; 

Stretch to the race — away! away! 

XXII 

Yet slow he laid his plaid aside, 
And, lingering, eyed his lovely bride, 
(Jntil he saw the starting tear 
Speak woe he might not stop to cheer; 
5 Then, trusting not a second look, 
In haste he sped him up the brook, 



142 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Nor backward glanced, till on the heath 

Where Lubnaig's lake supplies the Teith. 

— What in the racer's bosom stirr'd? 

The sickening pang of hope deferr'd, lo 

And memory, with a torturing train 

Of all his morning visions vain. 

Mingled with love's impatience, came 

The manly thirst for martial fame ; 

The stormy joy of mountaineers, 15 

Ere yet they rush upon the spears ; 

And zeal for Clan and Chieftain burning. 

And hope, from well-fought field returning, 

With war's red honours on his crest, 

To clasp his Mary to his breast. ao 

Stung by such thoughts, o'er bank and brae, 

Like fire from flint he glanced away. 

While high resolve, and feeling strong, 

Burst into voluntary song. 

XXIII 

SO]S^G 

The heath this night must be my bed, 
The bracken, curtain for my head, 
My lullaby the warder's tread, 

Far, far, from love and thee, Mary; 
To-morrow eve, more stilly laid, 6 

My couch may be my bloody plaid, 
My vesper song, thy wail, sweet maid! 

It will not waken me, Mary! 



CANTO THIRD 14? 

I may not, dare not, fancy now 
10 The grief that clouds thy lovely brow, 
I dare not think upon thy vow. 

And all it promised me, Mary. 
No fond regret must Norman know; 
When bursts Clan- Alpine on the foe, 
15 His heart must be like bended bow. 

His foot like arrow free, Mary. 

A time will come with 'feeling fraught, 
For, if I fall in battle fought. 
Thy hapless lover's dying thought 
20 Shall be a thought on thee, Mary. 

And if return'd from conquered foes. 
How blithely will the evening close. 
How sweet the linnet sing repose. 

To my young bride and me, Mary! 

Not faster o'er thy heathery braes, 

Balquidder, speeds the midnight blaze. 

Rushing, in conflagration strong. 

Thy deep ravines and dells along, 
5 Wrapping thy cliffs in purple glow, 

And reddening the dark lakes below ; 

Nor faster speeds it, nor so far, 

As o'er thy heaths the voice of war. 

The signal roused to martial coil, 
10 The sullen margin of Loch Voil, 



144 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Waked still Loch Doine, and to the source 
Alarm'd, Balvaig, thy swampy course; 
Thence southward turn'd its rapid road 
Adown Strath-Gartney's valley broad, 
Till rose in arms each man might claim 
A portion in Clan-Alpine's name^ 
From the grey sire, whose trembling hand 
Could hardly buckle on his brand. 
To the raw boy, whose shaft and bow 
Were yet scarce terror to the crow. 
Each valley, each sequester 'd glen, 
Muster 'd its little horde of men. 
That met as torrents from the height 
In Highland dales their streams unite, 
Still gathering, as they pour along, 
A voice more loud, a tide more strong. 
Till at the rendezvous they stood 
By hundreds prompt for blows and blood, 
Each train'd to. arms since life began; 
Owning no tie but to his clan, 
No oath, but by his chieftain's hand, 
No law, but Eoderick Dhu's command. 

XXV 

That summer morn had Eoderick Dhu 
Survey'd the skirts of Benvenue, 
And sent his scouts o'er hill and heath, 
To view the frontiers of Menteith. 
All backward came with news of trace; 
Still lay each martial Graeme and Bruce, 



CANTO THIRD 145 

In Eednoch courts no horsemen wait, 

No banner waved on Cardross gate, 

On Dnchray's towers no beacon shone, 
10 Nor scared the herons from Loch Con ; 

All seem'd at peace. — Now wot ye why 

The Chieftain, with such anxious eye, 

Ere to the muster he repair. 

This western frontier scann'd with care?-— 
15 In Benvenue's most darksome cleft, 

A fair, though cruel, pledge was left; 

For Douglas, to his promise true, 

That morning from the isle withdrew, 

And in a deep sequester 'd dell 
^0 Had sought a low and lonely cell. 

By many a bard, in Celtic tongue. 

Has Coir-nan-Uriskin been sung; 

A softer name the Saxons gave. 

And caird the grot the Goblin-cava 

XXVI 

It was a wild and strange retreat, 

As e'er was trod by outlaw's feet. 

The dell, upon the mountain's crest, 

Yawn'd like a gash on warrior's breast; 
5 Its trench had staid full many a rock, 

Hurl'd by primeval earthquake shock 

From Benvenue's grey summit wild, 

And here, in random ruin piled. 

They frown 'd incumbent o'er the spot, 
10 And form'd the rugged silvan grot. 



146 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

TKe oak and birch, with mingled shade, ' 

At noontide there a twilight made, 

Unless when short and sudden shone 

Some straggling beam on cliff or stone, 

With such a glimpse as prophet's eye is 

Gains on thy depth, Futurity. 

No murmur waked the solemn still, 

Save tinkling of a fountain rill ; 

But when the wind chafed with the lake, 

A sullen sound would upward break, g© 

With dashing hollow voice, that spoke 

The incessant war of wave and rock. 

Suspended cliffs, with hideous sway, 

Seem'd nodding o'er the cavern grey. 

From such a den the wolf had sprung, 25 

In such the wild-cat leaves her young; 

Yet Douglas and his daughter fair 

Sought for a space their safety there. 

Grey Superstition's whisper dread 

Debarr'd the spot to vulgar tread; " ae 

For there, she said, did fays resort, 

And satyrs hold their silvan court. 

By moonlight tread their mystic maze, 

And blast the rash beholder's gaze. 

XXVII 

Now eve, with western shadows long. 
Floated on Katrine bright and strong, 
When Eoderick, with a chosen few, 
"Repass 'd the heights of Benvenue. 



CANTO THIRD 147 

5 Above the Goblin-cave they go, 

Through the wild pass of Beal-nam-bo: 

The prompt retainers speed before, 

To launch the shallop from the shore, 

For 'cross Loch Katrine lies his way 
10 To view the passes of Achray, 

And place his clansmen in array. 

Yet lags the chief in musing mind, 

Unwonted sight, his men behind. 

A single page, to bear his sword, 
15 Alone attended on his lord; 

The rest their way through thickets break. 

And soon await him by the lake. 

It was a fair and gallant sight. 

To view them from the neighbouring height^ 
20 By the low-levell'd sunbeam's light! 

For strength and stature, from the clan 

Each warrior was a chosen man. 

As even afar might well be seen, 

By their proud step and martial mien. 
25 Their feathers dance, their tartans j9oat, 

Their targets gleam, as by the boat 

A wild and warlike group they stand. 

That well became such mountain-strands 

XXVIII 

Their Chief, with step reluctant, still 
Was lingering on the craggy hill. 
Hard by where turn'd apart the road 
To Douglas's obscure abode. 



148 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

It was but with that dawning morn, 5 

That Eoderick Dhii had proudly sworn 

To drown his love in war's wild roar, 

Nor think of Ellen Douglas more ; 

But he who stems a stream with sand, 

And fetters flame with flaxen band, !• 

Has yet a harder task to prove — 

By firm resolve to conquer love! 

Eve finds the Chief, like restless ghost, 

Still hovering near his treasure lost; 

For though his haughty heart deny is 

A parting meeting to his eye, 

Still fondly strains his anxious ear, 

The accents of her voice to hear, ' 

And inly did he curse the breeze 

That waked to sound the rustling trees. i^ 

But hark ! what mingles in the strain? 

It is the harp of Allan-bane, 

That wakes its measure slow and high, 

Attuned to sacred minstrelsy. 

What melting voice attends the strings? ^fe 

'Tis Ellen, or an angel, sings. 

XXIX 

HTMN TO THE YIRGf]^ 

Ave Maria ! maiden mild ! 

Listen to a maiden's prayer! 
Thou canst hear though from the wild. 

Thou canst save amid despair. 



CANTO THIRD 149 

5 Safe may we sleep beneath thy care, 

Though banish 'd, outcast, and reviled — 
Maiden! hear a maiden's prayer; 
Mother, hear a suppliant child! 

Ave Ma7na! 
10 Ave Maria! undefiled! 

The flinty couch we now must share 
Shall seem with down of eider piled, 

If thy protection hover there. 
The murky cavern's heavy air 
15 Shall breathe of balm if thou hast smiled; 
Then, Maiden! hear a maiden's prayer; 
Mother, list a suppliant child! 

Ave Maria! 

Ave Maria! stainless styled! 
20 Foul demons of the earth and air. 
From this their wonted haunt exiled, 
Shall flee before thy presence fair. 
We bow us to our lot of care. 

Beneath thy guidance reconciled ; 
25 Hear for a maid a maiden 's prayer, 
_A"nd for a father hear a child ! 

Ave Maria! 

XXX 

Died on the harp the closing hymn- 
Unmoved in attitude and limb, 
As list'ning still. Clan- Alpine's lord 
Stood leaning on his heavy sword. 



150 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Untilthe page, with humble sign, , 5 

Twice pointed to the sun's decline. 

Then while his plaid he round him cast, 

''It is the last time — 'tis the last," 

He muttered thrice, — ''the last time e'er 

That angel voice shall Eoderick hear!" lo 

It was a goading thought — his stride 

Hied hastier down the mountain side ; 

Sullen he flung him in the boat. 

And instant 'cross the lake it shot. 

They landed in that silvery bay, 15 

And eastward held their hasty way, 

Till, with the latest beams of light. 

The band arrived on Lanrick height. 

Where muster 'd, in the vale below, 

Clan-Alpine's men in martial show. 20 

XXXI 

A various scene the clansmen made. 

Some sate, some stood, some slowly stray 'd; 

But most with mantles folded round. 

Were couch'd to rest upon the ground, 

Scarce t6 be known by curious eye, 5 

From the deep heather where they lie, 

So well was match 'd the tartan screen 

AVith heath-bell dark and brackens green, 

Unless where, here and there, a blade. 

Or lance's point, a glimmer made, l^ 

Like glow-worm twinkling through the shade. 



CANTO THIRD 151 

But when, advancing through the gloom, 
They saw the Chieftain's eagle plume, 
Their shout of welcome, shrill and wide, 
15 Shook the steep mountain's steady side. 
Thrice it arose, and lake and fell 
Three times return'd the martial yell; 
It died upon Bochastle's plain, 
And Silence claim 'd her evening reign. 



CANTO FOUETH 



THE PROPHECY 
I 

/'The rose is fairest when 'tis budding new, 

And hope is brightest when it dawns from fears *, 
The rose is sweetest wash'd with morning dew, 

And love is loveliest when embalm'd in tears. 

wilding rose, whom fancy thus endears, 
I bid your blossoms in my bonnet wave, 

Emblem of hope and love through future 
years!" — 
Thus spoke young Norman, heir of Armandave, 
What time the sun arose on Vennachar's broad 
wave. 

II 

Such fond conceit, half said, half sung, 
Love prompted to the bridegroom's tongue. 
All while he stripp'd the wild-rose spray. 
His axe and bow beside him lay, 
For on a pass 'twixt lake and wood, 
A wakeful sentinel he stood. 

152 



20 



CANTO FOURTH 153 

Hark ! — on the rock a footstep rung, 

And instant to his arms he sprung. 

"Stand, or thou diest! — What, Malise? — soon 
30 Art thou return'd from Braes of Doune. 

By thy keen step and glance I know, 

Thou bring'st us tidings of the foe." — 

(For while the Fiery Cross hied on, 

On distant scout had Malise gone.) 
15 ^' Where sleeps the Chief?" the henchman said, 

"Apart, in j^onder misty glade; 

To his lone couch I'll be your guide." — 

Then call'd a slumberer by his side. 

And stirr'd him with his slacken'd bow— ?- 

'Up, up, Glentarkin! rouse thee, ho! 

We seek the Chieftain; on the track, 

Keep eagle watch till I come back." 

Ill 

Together up the pass they sped: 

"What of the foeman?" Norman said. — 

"Varying reports from near and far; 

This certain, — that a band of war 
5 Has for two days been ready bonne, 

At prompt command, to march from Doune; 

King James, the while, with princely powers, 

Holds revelry in Stirling towers. 

Soon will this dark and gathering cloud 
10 Speak on our glens in thunder loud. 

Inured to bide such bitter bout, 

The warrior's plaid may bear it out; ' 



154 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

But, Norman, how wilt thou provide 

A shelter for thy bonny bride?" — 

''What! know ye not that Roderick's care ^ 

To the lone isle hath caused repair 

Each maid and matron of the clan, 

And e^ery child and aged man 

Unfit for arms ; and given his charge, 

Nor skiff nor shallop, boat nor barge, ^ 

Upon these lakes shall float at large, 

But all beside the islet moor. 

That such dear pledge may rest secure?" — 

*' 'Tis well advised — the Chieftain's plan 

Bespeaks the father of his clan. 

But wherefore sleeps Sir Roderick Dhu 

Apart from all his followers true?" — 

"It is, because last evening-tide ® 

Brian an augury hath tried. 

Of that dread kind which must not be 

Unless in dread extremity. 

The Taghairm call'd ; by which, afar, 

Our sires foresaw the events of war. ^ 

Duncraggan's milk-white bull they slew.'* 

MALISE 

*'Ah! Well the gallant brute I knew 

The choicest of the prey we had, 

When swept our merry-men Gallangad. 

His hide was snow, his horns were dark, w 



CANTO FOURTH 165 

His red eye glow'd like fiery spark; 
So fierce, so tameless, and so fleet, 
Sore did lie cumber om' retreat. 
And kept our stoutest kernes in awe, 
90 Even at the pass of Beal 'maha. 
But steep and flinty was the road, 
And sharp the hurrying pikeman's goad, 
And when we came to Dennan's Eow, 
A child might scatheless stroke his brow.'*— 



"That bull was slain: his reeking hide 
They stretch'd the cataract beside, 
Whose waters their wild tumult toss v 
Adown the black and craggy boss 

5 Of that huge cliff, whose ample verge 
Tradition calls the Hero's Targe. 
Couch'd on a shelve beneath its brink, 
Close where the thundering torrents sink, 
Eocking beneath their headlong sway, 

10 And drizzled by the ceaseless spray. 
Midst groan of rock, and roar of stream, 
The wizard waits prophetic dream. 
Nor distant rests the Chief; — but hush! 
See, gliding slow through mist and bush, 

15 The hermit gains yon rock, and stands 
To gaze upon our slumbering bands. 



156 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Seems he not, Malise, like a ghost, 

That hovers o'er a slaughter 'd host? 

Or rayen on the blasted oak, 

That, watching while the deer is broke, 9D 

His morsel claims with sullen croak?" 

MALISE 

— ''Peace! peace! to other than to me, 

Thy words were evil augury; 

But still I hold Sir Eoderick's blade 

Clan-Alpine's omen and her aid, j^ 

Not aught that, glean 'd from heaven or hell, 

Yon fiend-begotten Monk can tell. 

The Chieftain joins him, see — and now. 

Together they descend the brow. " 

VI 

And, as they came, with Alpine's Lord 

The Hermit Monk held solemn word:— 

"Eoderick! it is a fearful strife, 

For man endow'd with mortal life. 

Whose shroud of sentient clay can still 6 

Feel feverish pang and fainting chill. 

Whose eye can stare in stony trance. 

Whose hair can rouse like warrior's lancBj-"-* 

'Tis hard for such to view, unfurl 'd, 

The curtain of the future world. ' 10 

Yet, witness every quaking limb, 

My sunken pulse, my eyeballs dim, 



CANTO FOURTH 157 

My soul with harrowing anguish torn, — 

This for my Chieftain have I borne! — 
15 The shapes that sought my fearful couch, 

A human tongue may ne'er avouch; 

No mortal man, — saT 3 he, who, bred 

Between the living and the dead, 

Is gifted beyond nature's law, — 
30 Had e'er survived to say he saw. 

At length the fatal answer came, 

In characters of living flame ! 

Not spoke in word, nor blazed in scroll, 

But borne and branded on my soul; — 
35 Which spills the fokemost poemak's life, 

That paety co^stquers iis the steiee." — 

VII 

''Thanks, Brian, for thy zeal and care! 

Good is thine augury, and fair. 

Clan-Alpine ne'er in battle stood. 

But first our broadswords tasted blood. 
g A surer victim still I know, 

Self-offer'd to the auspicious blow: 

A spy has sought my land this morn,— 

No eve shall witness his return! 

My followers guard each pass's mouth, 
JO To east, to westward, and to south; 

Eed Murdoch, bribed to be his guide, 

Has charge to lead his steps aside, 

Till, in deep path or dingle brown, 

He light on those shall bring him down. 



158 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

— But see, who comes his news to show I 16 

Malise! what tidings of the foe?" — 

VIII 

*'At Donne, o'er many a spear and glaive 

Two Barons proud their banners wave. 

I saw the Moray's silver star, 

And mark'd the sable pale of Mar." — 

*'By Alpine's soul, high tidings those! g 

I love to hear of worthy foes. 

When move they on?" — "To morrow's noon 

Will see them here for battle boune." — 

*'Then shall it see a meeting stern! — 

But, for the place — say, couldst thou learn le 

Nought of the friendly clans of Earn? 

Strengthen'd by them, we well might bide 

The battle on Benledi's side. 

Thou couldst not? — well! Clan-Alpine's men 

Shall man the Trosachs' shaggy glen ; 15 

Within Loch Katrine's gorge we'll fight, 

All in our maids' and matrons' sight, 

Each for his hearth and household fire, 

Father for child, and son for sire, — 

Lover for maid beloved! — But why — 20 

Is it the breeze affects mine eye ? 

Or dost thou come, ill-omen'd tear ! 

A messenger of doubt and fear? 

No ! sooner may the Saxon lance 

Unfix Benledi from his stance, 25 



CANTO FOURTH 159 

Than doubt or terror can pierce through 
The unyielding heart of Eoderick Dhu ! 
'Tis stubborn as his trusty targe. — 
Each to his post — all know their charge.'' 
30 The pibroch sounds, the bands advance, 
The broadswords gleam, the banners dance. 
Obedient to the Chieftain's glance. 
— I turn me from the martial roar, 
And seek Ooir-XJriskin once more. 



IX 



Where is the Douglas? — he is gone; 
And Ellen sits on the grey stone 
Fast by the cave, and makes her moan; 
While vainly Allan's words of cheer 

.5 Are pour'd on her unheeding ear. — 
"He will return — Dear lady, trust! — 
With joy return; — he will — -he must. 
Well was it time to seek, afar, 
Some refuge from impending war, 

10 When e'en Clan-Alpine's rugged swarm 
Are cow'd by the approaching storm. 
I saw their boats with many a light, 
Floating the live-long yesternight, 
Shifting like flashes darted forth 

15 By the red streamers of the north ; 
I mark'd at morn how close they ride, 
Thick moor'd by the lone islet's side, 



160 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Like wild-diicks coucliing in the fen, 
When stoops the hawk upon the glen. 
Since this rude race dare not abide 
The peril on the mainland side, 
Shall not thy noble father's care 
Some safe retreat for thee prepare?" — 



ELLEIIir 

*'No, Allan, no! Pretext so kind 

My wakeful terrors could not blindo 

When in such tender tone, yet grave, 

Douglas a parting blessing gave. 

The tear that glisten 'd in his eye 5 

Drown'd not his purpose fix'd on high. 

My soul, though feminine and weak. 

Can image his ; e'en as the lake. 

Itself disturb'd by slightest stroke, 

'Reflects the invulnerable rock. • !t 

He hears report of battle rife. 

He deems himself the cause of strife. 

I saw him redden, when the theme 

Turn'd, Allan, on thine idle dream 

Of Malcolm Grasme in fetters bound, 15 

Which I, thou saidst, about him wound. 

Think'st thou he trow'd thine omen aught? 

Oh no ! 'twas apprehensive thought 

For the kind youth, — for Roderick too — 

(Let me be just) that friend so true; ^ 



CANTO FOURTH 161 

In danger both, and in our cause! 

Minstrel, the Douglas dare not pause. 

Why else that solemn warning given, 

'If not on earth, we meet in heaven!' 
25 Why else, to Cambus-kenneth's fane 

If eve return him not again, 

Am I to hie, and make me known? 

Alas! he goes to Scotland's throne. 

Buys his friend's safety with his own;— 
30 He goes to do — what I had done. 

Had Douglas' daughf;er been his son!"— 

XI 

''Nay. lovely Ellen !— dearest, nay! 

If aught should his return delay, 

He only named yon holy fane 

As fitting place to meet again. 
5 Be sure he's safe; and for the Grgeme, — - 

Heaven's blessing on his gallant name!— 

My vision 'd sight may yet prove true. 

Nor bode of ill to him or you. 

When did my gifted dream beguile? 
10 Think of the stranger at the isle. 

And think upon the harpings slow, 

That presaged this approaching woe ! 

Sooth was my prophecy of fear ; 

Believe it when it augurs cheer. 
15 Would we had left this dismal spot I 

111 luck still haunts a fairy grot. 

( 

V 



162 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 



Of such a wondrous tale I know — 
Dear lady, change that look of woe, 
My harp was wont thy grief to cheer. 



> J 



ELLE]N" 



*'Well, be it as thou wilt; I hear, leo 

But cannot stop the bursting tear." 
The Minstrel tried his simple art, 
But distant far was Ellen's heart. 



XII 

\ BALLAD — ALICE BEAND 

Merry it is in the good greenwood, 

When the mavis and merle are singing. 

When the deer sweeps by, and the hounds are in 
cry, 
And the hunter's horn is ringing. 

'^0 Alice Brand, my native land 5 

Is lost for love of you ; 
And we must hold by wood and wold. 

As outlaws wont to do. 

*'0 Alice, 'twas all for thy locks so bright, 

And 'twas all for thine eyes so blue, K) 

That on the night of our luckless flight, 
Thy brother bold I slew. 



CANTO FOURTH 163 



*'Now must I teach to hew the beech 
The hand that held the glaive, 
15 For leaves to spread our lowly bed, 
And stakes to fence our cave. 



(C 



And for vest of pall, thy fingers small, 
That wont on harp to stray, 
A cloak must shear from the slaughter 'd deer^ 
20 To keep the cold away. " — 

^'0 Eichard! if my brother died, 

'Twas but a fatal chance; 
Eor darkling was the battle tried, 

And fortune sped the lance. 

25 "If pall and vair no more I wear. 
Nor thou the crimson sheen, 
As warm, we'll say, is the russet grey. 
As gay the forest-green. 

*'And, Eichard, if our lot be hard, 
30 And lost thy native land, 
Still Alice has her own Eichard, 
And he his Alice Brand. '* 

XIII 

B ALL A.D — ( Continued) 

'Tis 'merry, 'tis merry, in good greenwood; 

So blithe Lady Alice is singing ; 
On the beech's pride, and oak's brown side. 

Lord Eichard's axe is ringing. 



164 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Up spoke the moody Elfin King, 5 

Who wonn'd within the hill, — 
Like wind in the porch of a rnin'd church. 

His voice was ghostly shrill. 

*'Why sounds yon stroke on beech and oak, 

Our moonlight circle's screen? 16 

Or who comes here to chase the deer, 
Beloved of our Elfin Queen? 

Or v/ho may dare on wold to wear 
The fairies' fatal green? 

''Up, Urgan, up! to yon mortal hie, 15 

For thou wert christen 'd man; 
For cross or sign thou wilt not fly, 

For mutter 'd word or ban. 

"Lay on him the curse of the wither'd heai't. 

The curse of the sleepless eye ; 20 

Till he wish and pray that his life would part, 
Nor yet find leave to die." 

XIV 

BALLAD — (Continued) 

'Tis merry, 'tis merry, in good greenwood. 
Though the birds have still'd their singing; 

The evening blaze doth Alice raise, 
And Eichard is fagots bringing. 

Up Urgan starts, that hideous dwatf, q 

Before Lord Eichard stands, 



CANTO FOURTH 166 

And, as he cross 'd and bless 'd himself, 
*'I fear not sign," quoth the grisly elf, 
"That is made with, bloody hands." 

10 But out then spoke she, Alice Brand, 
That woman void of fear, — 
"And if there's blood upon his hand, 
'Tis but the blood of deer." — 

"Xow loud thou liest, thou bold of mood! 
15 It cleaves unto his hand. 

The stain of thine own kindly blood, 
The blood of Etliert Brand." 

Then forward stepp'd she, Alice Brand, 
And made the holy sign, — 
•20 "And if there's blood on Richard's hand^. 
A spotless hand is mine. 

"And I conjure thee, Demon elf, 

By Him whom Demons fear. 
To show us whence thou art thyself, 
25 And what thine errand here?" — 

XV 

BALLAD— (Continued) 

" 'Tis merry, 'tis merry, in Fair^^-land 

When fairy birds are singing, 
When the court doth ride by their monarch's side. 

With bit and bridle ringing : 



166 THE LADl^ Oi THE LAKE 



a 



And gaily shines the Fairy -land — 
But all is glistening show, 
Like the idle gleam that December's beam 
Can dart on ice and snow. 



(( 



And fading, like that varied gleam, 
Is our inconstant shape, 10 

"Who now like knight and lady seem. 
And now like dwarf and ape. 

*'It was between the night and day, 

When the Fairy King has power, 
That I sunk down in a sinful fray, i§ 

And, 'twixt life and death, was snatch'd away 

To the joyless Elfin bower. 

*'But wist I of a woman bold. 

Who thrice my brow durst sign, 
I might regain my mortal mould, 80 

As fair a form as thine." 

She cross'd him once — she cross'd him twice— 

That lady was so brave ; 
The fouler grew his goblin hue, 

The darker grew the cave. H 

She cross'd him thrice, that lady bold; 

He rose beneath her hand 
The fairest knight on Scottish mould, 

Her brother, Ethert Brand! 



CANTO FOUETH 167 

80 Merry it is in good greenwood, 

When the mavis and merle are singing, 
But merrier were they in Dunfermline grey, 
When all the bells were ringing. 



XVI 



Just as the minstrel sounds were staid, 

A stranger climb 'd the steepy glade; 

His martial step, his stately mien, 

His hunting suit of Lincoln green, 
5 His eagle glance, remembrance claims — 

'Tis Snowdoun's Knight, 'tis James Fitz-James« 

Ellen beheld as in a dream. 

Then, starting, scarce suppressed a scream 

*'0 stranger! in such hour of fear, 
w What evil hap has brought thee here?" — 

''An evil hap how can it be. 

That bids me look again on thee? 

By promise bound, my former guide 

Met me betimes this morning tide, 
15 And marshall'd, over bank and bourne, 

The happy path of my return." — 

''The happy path ! — what ! said he nought 

Of war, of battle to be fought, 

Of guarded pass?" — "No, by my faith! 
20 Nor saw I aught could augur scathe." — 

*'0 haste thee, Allan, to the kern, 

— Yonder his tartans I discern; 



168 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Learn thou his purpose, and conjure 

That he will guide the stranger sure ! — - 

What prompted thee, unhappy man? »6 

The meanest serf in Eoderick's clan 

Had not been bribed by love or fear, 

Unknown to him to guide thee here.''^ — 



XVII 

''Sweet Ellen, dear my life must be 

Since it is worthy care from thee ; 

Yet life I hold but idle breath. 

When love or honour's weigh 'd with death. 

Then let me profit by my chance, 5 

And speak my purpose bold afc once. 

I come to bear thee from a wild. 

Where ne'er before such blossom smiled; 

By this soft hand to lead thee far 

From frantic scenes of feud and war. 10 

Near Bochastle my horses waifc ; 

They bear us soon to Stirling gate. 

I'll place thee in a lovely bower, 

I'll guard thee like a tender flower" — 

"0! hush, Sir Knight! 'twere female art, i5 

To say I do not read thy heart ; 

Too much, before, my selfish ear 

Was idly soothed my praise to hear. 

That fatal bait hath lured thee back. 

In deathful hour, o'er dangerous track; 20 



CANTO FOURTH 169 

And how, O how, can I atone 

The wreck mj vanity brought on! — 

One way remains — I'll tell him all — 

Yes ! struggling bosom, forth it shall ! 
25 Thou, whose light folly bears the blame, 

Buy thine own pardon with thy shame ! 

But first — my father is a man 

Outlaw'd and exiled, nnder ban; ^ 

The price of blood is on his head, 
30 With me 'twere infamy to wed. — 

Still wouldst thou speak? — then hear the truth ! 

Fitz-James, there is a noble youth, — 

If yet he is! — exposed for me 

And mine to dread extremity — 
35 Thou hast the secret of mv heart : 

Forgive, be generous, and depart!'' 

XVIII 

Fitz-James knew every wily train 

A lady's fickle heart to gain, 

But here he knew and felt them vain. 

There shot no glance from Ellen's eye. 
5 To give her steadfast speech the lie ; 

In maiden confidence she stood. 

Though mantled in her cheek the biooa 

And told her love with such a sigh 

Of deep and hopeless agony, 
10 As death had seal'd her Malcolm's doom, 

And she sat sorrowing on his tomb. 



170 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Hope yanish'd from Fitz-James's eye, 

But not with hope fled sympathy. 

He proffer'd to attend her side, 

As brother would a sister guide. — 15 

''0! little know'st thou Eoderick's heart! 

Safer for both we go apart. 

haste thee, and from Allan learn, 

If thou may'st trust yon wily kern." 

With hand upon his forehead laid, '20 

The conflict of his mind to shade, 

A parting step or two he made; 

Then, as some thought had cross 'd his brain, 

He paused, and turn'd, and came again. 



XIX 



a 



Hear, lady, yet, a parting word! — 
It chanced in fight that my poor sword 
Preserved the life of Scotland's lord. 
This ring the grateful Monarch gave. 
And bade, when I had boon to crave^ 
To bring it back, and boldly claim 
The recompense that I would name. 
Ellen, I am no courtly lord, 
But one who lives by lance and sword, 
Whose castle is his helm and shield. 
His lordship the embattled field. 
What from a prince can I demand, 
Who neither reck of state nor land? 



10 



CANTO FOURTH 171 

Ellen, thy hand — the ring is thine ; 
15 Each guard and usher knows the sign. 

Seek thou the king without delay ; 

This signet shall secure thy way ; 

And claim thy suit, whate'er it be, 

As ransom of his pledge to me." 
20 He placed the golden circlet on, 

Paused — kiss'd her hand — and then was gone. 

The aged Minstrel stood aghast, 

So hastily Fitz-James shot past. 

He join'd his guide, and wending down 
25 The ridges of the mountain brown. 

Across the stream they took their way. 

That joins Loch Katrine to Achray. 



XX 



All in the Trosachs' glen was still. 
Noontide was sleeping on the hill : 
Sudden his guide whoop 'd loud and high — 
^'Murdoch! was that a signal cry?" — 

5 He stammer 'd forth — ''I shout to scare 
Yon raven from his dainty fare." 
He look'd — he knew the raven's prey. 
His own brave steed: — ''Ah! gallant grey! 
For thee — for me, perchance — 'twere well 

10 We ne'er had seen the Trosachs' dell. — 
Murdoch, move first — but silently ; 
Whistle or whoop, and thou shalt die!" 



172 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Jealous and sullen on they fared, 
Each silent, each upon his guard. 

XXI 

Now wound the path its dizzy ledge 

Around a precipice's edge. 

When lo! a wasted female form, 

Blighted by wrath of sun and storm, 

In tatter 'd weeds and wild array, 5 

Stood on a cliff beside the way. 

And glancing round her restless eye. 

Upon the wood, the rock, the sky, 

Seem'd nought to mark, yet all to spy. 

Her brow was wreath 'd with gaudy broom; 10 

With gesture wild she waved a plume 

Of feathers, which the eagles fling 

To crag and cliff from dusky wing; 

Such spoils her desperate step had sought, 

Where scarce was footing for the goat. 15 

The tartan plaid she first descried. 

And shriek'd till all the rocks replied; 

As loud she laugh'd when near they drew, 

For then the Lowland garb she knew; 

And then her hands she wildly wrung, 20 

And then she wept, and then she sung — 

She sung! — ^the voice, in better time. 

Perchance to harp or lute might chime ; 

And now, though strain'd and roughen'd, still 

Rung wildly sweet to dale and hill, 25 



CANTO FOURTH 173 

XXII 

SOXG 

They bid me sleep, they bid me pray, 

They say my brain is warp'd and wrung — - 

I cannot sleep on Highland brae, 
I cannot pray in Highland tongue. 
5 But were I now where Allan glides, 

Or heard my native Devan's tides. 

So sweetly would I rest, and pray 

That Heaven would close my wintry day! 

'Twas thus my hair they bade me braid, 
10 They made me to the church repair ; 

It was my bridal morn they said, 

And my true love would meet me there. 

But woe jetide the cruel guile. 

That drowp'd in blood the morning smile; 
15 And woe beMde the fairy dream ! 

I only wakec to sob and scream. 

XXIII 



''Who is this maid? what means her lay? 
She hovers o'er the hollow way. 
And flutters wide her mantle grey. 
As the lone heron spreads his wing. 
By twilight, o'er a haunted spring." 
" 'Tis Blanche of Devan," Murdoch said, 
A crazed and captive Lowland maid, 



(( 



174 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Ta'en on the morn she was a bride, 

When Koderick foray'd Devan side. 

The gay bridegroom resistance made, 10 

And felt our Chief's unconquer'd blade. 

I marvel she is now at large. 

But oft she 'scapes from Maudlin's charge. — 

Hence, brain-sick fool!" — He raised his bow: — 

^'Now, if thou strik'Gt her but one blow, i5 

I'll pitch thee from the cliff as far 

As ever peasant pitch'd a bar!" — 

^'Thanks, champion, thanks!" the Maniac cried, 

And press'd her to Fitz-James's side. 

''See the grey pennons I prepare, 20 

To seek my true-love through the air ! 

I will not lend that savage groom. 

To break his fall, one downy plume! 

ISTo ! — deep amid disjointed stones, 

The wolves shall batten on his bones, 25 

And then shall his detested plaid. 

By bush and brier in mid air staid, 

Wave forth a banner fair and free, 

Meet signal for their revelry. " — 

XXIV 

*'Hush thee, poor maiden, and be still!" — 

*'0! thou look'st kindly, and I will. — 

Mine eye has dried and wasted been, 

But still it loves the Lincoln green ; 

And, though mine ear is all unstrung, 5 

Still, still it loves the Lowland tongn^o 



7<f 



CANTO FOURTH l'?5 



*'For my sweet William was forester true, 

He stole poor Blanche's heart away! 
His coat it was all of the greenwood hue, 
10 And so blithely he trill'd the Lowland lay! 

*'It was not that I meant to tell . . . 
But thou art wise and guessest well.'* 
Then, in a low and broken tone, 
And hurried note, the song went on. 
15 Still on the Clansman, fearfully, 
She fix'd her apprehensive eye; 
Then turn'd it on the Knight, and then 
Her look glanced wildly o'er the glen. 



XXV 

*'The toils are pitch 'd, and the stakes are set, 

Ever sing merrily, merrily ; 
The bows they bend, and the knives they whet. 

Hunters live so cheerily. 

5 ''It was a stag, a stag of ten. 
Bearing its branches sturdily; 
He came stately down the glen, 
Ever sing hardily, hardily. 

''It was there he met with a wounded doe, 
10 She was bleeding deathf uUy ; 
She warn'd him of the toils below, 
0, so faithfully, 'faithfully! 



176 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

*'He had an eye, and he could heed, 

Ever sing warily, warily; 
He had a foot, and he could speed — ife 

Hunters watch so narrowly." 

XXVI 

Fitz- James's. mind was passion-toss'd, 

When Ellen's hints and fears were lost; 

But Murdoch's shout suspicion wrought, 

And Blanche's song conviction brought. — 

Not like a stag that spies the snare, 5 

Bub lion of the hunt aware. 

He waved at once his blade on high, 

''Disclose thy treachery, or die!" 

Forth at full speed the Clansman flew. 

But in his race his bow he drew. so 

The shaft just grazed Fitz- James's crest, 

And thrilled in Blanche's faded breast. — 

Murdoch of Alpine ! prove thy speed. 

For ne'er had Alpine's son such need! 

With heart of fire, and foot of wind, 2S 

The fierce avenger is behind ! 

Fate judges of the rapid strife — 

The forfeit death — the prize is life ! 

Thy kindred ambush lies before, 

Close couch'd upon the heathery moor; 2^ 

Them couldst thou reach ! — it may not be — 

Thine ambush'd kin thou ne'er shalt see, 

The fiery Saxon gains on thee ! 



CANTO FOURTH 177 

— Resistless speeds the deadly thrust, 
25 As lightning strikes the pine to dust; 

With foot and hand Fitz-James must strains 

Ere he can win his blade again. 

Bent o'er the fall'n, with falcon eye, 

He grimly smiled to see him die ; 
30 Then slower wended back his way, 

Where the poor maiden bleeding lay. 



XXVII 

She sate beneath a birchen-tree, 

Her elbow resting on her knee ; 

She had withdrawn the fatal shaft, 

And gazed on it, and feebly laugh'd; 
5 Her wreath of broom and feathers grey. 

Daggled with blood, beside her lay. 

The Knight to staunch the life-stream tried. 

"Stranger, it is in vain!" she cried. 

"This hour of death has given me m^ore 
10 Of reason's power than years before; 

For, as these ebbing veins decay. 

My frenzied visions fade away. 

A helpless injured wretch I die. 

And something tells me in thine eye, 
15 That thou wert mine avenger born. — 
■ Seest thou this tress? — ! still I've worn 

This little tress of yellow hair. 

Through danger, frenzy, and despair! 



17^ THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

it once was bright and clear as thine, 

But blood and tears have dimm'd its shine. 20 

I will not tell thee when 'twas shred, 

Nor from what guiltless victim's head — 

My brain would turn ! — but it shall wave 

Like plumage on thy helmet brave, 

Till sun and wind shall bleach the stain, 25 

And thou wilt bring it me again. — 

I waver still. — God! more bright 

Let reason beam her parting light! — 

! by thy knighthood's honour 'd sign, 

And for thy life preserved by mine, 3d 

When thou shalt see a darksome man, 

Who boasts him Chief of Alpine's Clan, 

With tartans broad and shadowy plume 

And hand of blood, and brow of gloom. 

Be thy heart bold, thy weapon strong, 85 

And wreak poor Blanche of Devan's wrong! — 

They watch for thee by pass and fell ... 

Avoid the path ... God! ... farewell." 

XXVIII 

A kindly heart had brave Fitz- James; 

Fast pour'd his eyes at pity's claims, 

And now, with mingled grief and ire, 

He saw the murder 'd maid expire. 

"God, in my need, be my relief, ^ 

As I wreak this on yonder Chief!" 

A lock from Blanche's tresses fair 



CANTO FOURTH 179 

He blended with her bridegroom's hair; 

The mingled braid in blood he dyed, 
10 And placed it on his bonnet-side: 

^'By Him whose word is truth! I swear, 

No other favour will I wear, 

Till this sad token I imbrue 

In the best blood of Eoderick Dhu ! 
15 — But hark! what means yon faint halloo? 

The chase is up, — but they shall know. 

The stag at bay's a dangerous foe. " 

Barr'd from the known but guarded way, 

Through copse and cliffs Fitz-James must stray, 
20 And oft must change his desperate track, 

By stream and precipice turn'd back. 

Heartless, fatigued, and faint, at length, 

From lack of food and loss of strength, 

He couch'd him in a thicket hoar, 
25 And thought his toils and perils o'er: — 

*'0f all my rash adyentures past, 

This frantic feat must prove the last ! 

Who e'er so mad but might have guess'd, 

That all this Highland hornet's nest 
30 Would muster up in swarms so soon 

As e'er they heard of bands at Doune? — 

Like bloodhounds now they search me out, — 

Hark, to the whistle and the shout ! — 

If further through the wilds I go, 
35 I only fall upon the foe : 

I'll couch me here till evening grey. 

Then darkling try my dangerous way.''' 



180 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

XXIX 

The shades of eve come slowly down, 

The woods are wrapped in deeper brown, 

The owl awakens from her dell, 

The fox is heard upon the fell; 

Enough remains of glimmering light 5 

To guide the wanderer's steps aright, 

Yet not enough from far to show 

His figure to the watchful foe. 

With cautious step, and ear awake, 

He climbs the crag and threads the brake; ic 

And not the summer solstice, there. 

Tempered the midnight mountain air. 

But every breeze, that swept the wold, 

Benumb 'd his drenched limbs with cold. 

In dread, in danger,. and alone, 15 

Famish'd and -chill'd, through ways unknown, 

Tangled and steep, he journey 'd on; 

Till, as a rock's huge point he turn'd, 

A watch-fire close before him burn'd. 

XXX 

Beside its embers red and clear, 

Bask'd, in his plaid, a mountaineer; 

And up he sprung with sword in hand,=— 

"Thy name and purpose! Saxon, stand!" 

"A stranger." ''What dost thou require?"— i- 

*'Eest and a guide, and food and fire. 



CANTO FOURTH 181 

My life's beset, my path is lost, 

The gale has chill'd my limbs with frost." — •' 

*'Art thou a friend to Koderick?" ''No." 

10 ^^Thou darest not call thyself a foe?" 
''I dare! to him and all the band 
He brings to aid his murderous hand." — 
''Bold words! — but, though the beast of game 
The privilege of chase may claim, 

15 Though space and law the stag we lend, 
Ere hound we slip, or bow we bend. 
Who ever reck'd, where, how, or when, 
The prowling fox was trapp'd or slain? 
Thus treacherous scouts, — yet sure they lie, 

20 Who say thou earnest a secret spy!" — 

"They do, by heaven! — Come Eoderick Dhiy 
And of his clan the boldest two. 
And let me but till morning rest, 
I write the falsehood on their crest." 

25 ''If by the blaze I mark aright, 

Thou bear'st the belt and spur of Knight.'' 
"Then by these tokens may'st thou know 
Each proud oppressor's mortal foe." — 
"Enough, enough; sit down and share 

80 A soldier's couch, a soldier's fare." 

XXXI 

He gave him of his Highland cheer, 
The harden'd flesh of mountain deer; 
Dry fuel on the fire he laid, 
And bade the Saxon share his plaid. 



182 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

He tended him like welcome guest, « 

Then' thus his further speech address 'd: — 

"Stranger, I am to Eoderick Dhu 

A clansman born, a kinsman true ; 

Each word against his honour spoke, 

Demands of me avenging stroke ; le 

Yet more, — upon thy fate, 'tis said, 

A mighty augury is laid. 

It rests with me to wind my horn, — 

Thou art with numbers overborne; 

It rests with me, here, brand to brand, 15 

Worn as thou art, to bid thee stand: 

But, not for clan, nor kindred's cause, 

Will I depart from honour's laws; 

To assail a wearied man were shame, 

And stranger is a holy name; s© 

Guidance and rest, and food and fire, 

In vain he never must require. 

Then rest thee here till dawn of day ; 

Myself will guide thee on the way. 

O'er stock and stone, through watch and ward, 26 

Till past Clan-Alpine's outmost guard. 

As far as Coilantogle's ford; 

From thence thy warrant is thy sword." 

**I take thy courtesy, by heaven. 

As freely as 'tis nobly given!" so 

*'Well, rest thee; for the bittern's cry . y 

Sings us the lake's wild lullaby." 

With that he shook the gather 'd heath. 

And spread his plaid upon the wreath; 



CANTO FOURTH 183 



» And the brave foemen, side by side, 
Lay peaceful down like brothers tried, 
And slept until the dawning beam 
Purpled the mountain and the stream. 



CANTO FIFTH 



THE COMBAT 
I 

Fair as the earliest beam of eastern light, 

When first, by the bewilder 'd pilgrim spied, • 
It smiles upon the dreary brow of night, 

And silvers o'er the torrent's foaming tide. 
And lights the fearful path on mountain side ; — 

Fair as that beam, although the fairest far, 
Giving to horror grace, to danger pride, 

Shine martial Faith, and Courtesy's bright star, 
Through all the wreckful storms that cloud the 
brow of War. 



II 



That early beam, so fair and sheen, 
Was twinkling through the hazel screen. 
When, rousing at its glimmer red. 
The warriors left their lowly bed, 
Look'd out upon the dappled sky. 
Mutter 'd their soldier matins by. 
And then awaked their fire, to steal, 
As short and rude, their soldier meal. 

184 



CANTO FIFTH 185 

That o'er, the Gael around him threw 
His graceful plaid of varied hue, 

And, true to promise, led the way, 

By thicket green and mountain grey. 

A wildering path ! — they winded now 

Along the precipice's brow, 
15 Commanding the rich scenes beneath, 

The windings of the Forth and Teith, 

And all the vales between that lie, 

Till Stirling's turrets melt in sky ; 

Then, sunk in copse, their farthest glance 
20 Gain'd not the length of horseman's lance. 

'Twas oft so steep, the foot was fain 

Assistance from the hand to gain ; 

So tangled oft, that, bursting through. 

Each hawthorn shed her showers of dew, — 
25 That diamond dew, so pure and clear, 

It rivals all but Beauty's tear ! 



Ill 



At length they came where, stern and steep. 
The hill sinks down upon the deep. 
Here Yennachar in silver flows. 
There, ridge on ridge, Benledi rose; 
Ever the hollow path twined on. 
Beneath steep bank and threatening stone; 
An hundred men might hold the post 
With hardihood against a host. 



186 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

The rugged mountain's scanty cloak 

Was dwarfish shrubs of birch and oak, 

With shingles bare, and cliffs between, 

And patches bright of bracken green, 

And heather black, that waved so high, 

It held the copse in rivalry. 

But where the lake slept deep and still, 

Dank osiers fringed the swamp and hill; 

And oft both path and hill were torn, 

Where wintry torrents down had borne, 

And heap'd upon the cumber'd land 

Its wreck of gravel, rocks, and sand. 

So toilsome was the road to trace, 

The guide, abating of his pace. 

Led slowly through the pass's jaws. 

And ask'd Fitz-James, by what strange cause 

He sought these wilds? traversed by few, 

Without a pass from Eoderick Dhu. 



IV 



*' Brave Gael, my pass, in danger tried, 
Hangs in my belt, and by my side; 
Yet, sooth to tell," the Saxon said, 
''I dreamt not now to claim its aid. 
"^^en here, but three days since, I came, 
Bewilder 'd in pursuit of game, 
All seem'd as peaceful and as still, 
As the mist slumbering on yon hill; 



CANTO FIFTH 187 

Thy dangerous Chief was then afar, 
10 Nor soon expected back from war. 

Thus said, at least, my mountain-guide, 

Though deep perchance the villain lied." — 

''Yet why a second venture try?" — 

''A warrior thou, and ask me why! — 
15 Moves our free course by such fix'd cause, 

As gives the poor mechanic laws? 

Enough, I sought to drive away 

The lazy hours of peaceful day ; 

Slight cause will then suffice to guide 
20 A Knight's free footsteps far and wide, — 

A falcon flown, a greyhound stray'd, 

The merry glance of mountain maid : 

Or, if a path be dangerous known. 

The danger's self is lure alone." — 



*'Thy secret keep, I urge thee not; — 
Yet, ere again ye sought this spot, 
Say, heard ye nought of Lowland war, 
Against Clan- Alpine, raised by Mar?" 

5 — ''No, by my word; — of bands prepared 
To guard King James's sports I heard; 
Nor doubt I aught, but, when they hear 
This muster of the mountaineer. 
Their pennons will abroad be flung, 

10 Which else in Doune had peaceful hung.' 



188 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

'Tree be they flung! — for we were loth 

Their silken folds should feast the moth. 

Free be they flung ! — as free shall wave 

Clan-Alpine's pine in banner brave. 

But, Stranger, peaceful since you came, i6 

Bewilder 'd in the mountain game, 

Whence the bold boast by which you show 

Vich-Alpine's vow'd and mortal foe?" — 

"Warrior, but yester-morn, I knew 

Nought of thy Chieftain, Eoderick Dhu, 20 

Save as an outlaw'd desperate man, 

The chief of a rebellious clan, 

Who, in the Eegent's court and sight, 

With ruffian dagger stabb'd a knight: 

Yet this alone might from his part 35 

Sever each true and loyal heart." 



VI 



Wrothful at such arraignment foul, 

Dark lower'd the clansman's sable scowl. 

A space he paused, then sternly said, • 

"And heard'st thou why he drew his blade? 

Heard'st thou that shameful word and blow «s 

Brought Eoderick's vengeance on his foe? 

What reck'd the Chieftain if he stood 

On Highland heath, or Holy-Eood? 

He rights such wrong where it is given, 

If it were in the court of heaven." — le 



CANTO FIFTH 189 

*'Still was it outrage; — yet, 'tis true, 
Not then claim'd sovereignty his due; 
While Albany, with feeble hand. 
Held borrow 'd truncheon of command, 

^5 The young King, mew'd in Stirling tower, 
Was stranger to respect and power. 
But then, thy Chieftain's robber life! — 
Winning mean prey by causeless strife, 
Wrenching from ruin'd Lowland swain 

20 His herds and harvest reared in vain. — 
Methinks a soul, like thine, should scorn 
The spoils from such foul foray borneo" 



VII 

The Gael beheld him grim the while, 
And answer 'd with disdainful smile, — 
''Saxon, from yonder mountain high, 
I mark'd thee send delighted eye. 
Far to the south and east, where lay, 
Extended in succession gay. 
Deep waving fields and pastures green, 
With gentle slopes and groves between : — 
These fertile plains, that soften'd vale, 
Were once the birthright of the Gael ; 
The stranger came with iron hand. 
And from our fathers reft the land. 
Where dwell we now ! See, rudely swell 
Cr^g over crag, and fell o'er fell. 



190 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Ask we this savage hill we tread, lu 

For fatten'd steer or household bread; 

Ask we for flocks these shingles dry, 

And well the mountain might reply, — 

*To you, as to your sires of yore, 

Belong the target and claymore ! ^ 2C 

I give you shelter in my breast. 

Your own good blades must win the rest.' 

Pent in this fortress of the North, 

Think'st thou we will not sally forth, 

To spoil the spoiler as we may, 25 

And from the robber rend the prey? 

Ay, by my soul ! — JVhile on yon plain 

The Saxon rears one shock of grain ; 

While, of ten thousand herds, there strays 

But one along yon river's maze, — so 

The Gael, of plain and river heir, 

Shall, with strong hand, redeem his share. 

Where live the mountain Chiefs who hold 

That plundering Lowland field and fold 

Is aught but retribution true? 35 

Seek other cause 'gainst Eoderick Dhu." — 

VIII 

Answer 'd Fitz- James, — ''And, if I sought, 

Think'st thou no other could be brought? 

What deem ye of my path waylaid? 

My life given o'er to ambuscade?" — 

"As of a meed to rashness due: 5 

Hadst thou sent warning fair and true, — 



CANTO FIFTH 191 

I seek my hound, or falcon stray'd, 

I seek, good faith, a Highland maid,— 

Free hadst thou been to come and go; 
10 But secret path marks secret foe. 

Nor yet, for this, even as a spy, 

Hadst thou, unheard, been doom'd to die. 

Save to fulfil an augury." — 

''Well, let it pass; nor will I now 
15 Fresh cause of enmity avow. 

To chafe thy mood and cloud thy brow* 

Enough, I am by promise tied 

To match me with this man of pride: 

Twice have I sought Clan-Alpine's glen 
so In peace ; but when I come agen, 

I come with banner, brand, and bow, 

As leader seeks his mortal foe. 

For love-lorn swain, in lady's bower, 

Ne'er panted for the appointed hour, 
25 As I, until before me stand 

This rebel Chieftain and his band!" 

IX 

*'Have, then, thy wish!" — He whistled shrill. 
And he was answer'd from the hill; 
Wild as the scream of the curie w^ 
From crag to crag the signal flew. 
5 Instant, through copse and heath, arose 
Bonnets and spears and bended bows ; 
On right, on left, above, below. 
Sprung up at once the lurking foe ; 



19g THE LADY OF THE LAKF. 

From shingles grey their lances start, 

The bracken bush sends forth the dart, ic 

The rushes and the willow-wand 

Are bristling into axe and brand, 

And every tuft of broom gives life 

To plaided warrior arm'd for strife. 

That whistle garrison 'd the glen 15 

At once with full five hundred men, 

As if the yawning hill to heaven 

A subterranean host had given. 

Watching their leader's beck and will, 

All silent there they stood, and still. 20 

Like the loose crags whose threatening mass 

Lay tottering o'er the hollow pass, » 

As if an infant's touch could urge 

Their headlong passage down the verge. 

With step and weapon forward flung, 25 

Upon the mountain-side they hung. 

The Mountaineer cast glance of pride 

Along Benledi's living side. 

Then fix'd his eye and sable brow 

Fall on Fit2- James — ''How say'st thou now? 3§ 

These are Clan-Alpine's warriors true; 

And, Sa^xon, — I am Eoderick Dhu!" 



•Fitz- James was brave : — Though to his heart 
The life-blood thrill 'd with sudden start. 
He mann'd himself with dauntless air, 
Return'd the Chief his haughty stare, 



CANTO FIFTH 193 

5 His back against a rock he bore, 

And firmly placed his foot before : — 

''Come one, come all! this rock shall fly 

From its firm base as soon as I." 

Si^ Eoderick mark'd — and in his eyes 
w Eespect was mingled with surprise. 

And the stern joy which warriors feel 
^ In foemen worthy of their steel. 

Short space he stood— then waved his hand: 

Down sunk the disappearing band; 
i5 Each warrior vanished where he stood, 

In broom or bracken, heath or wood; 

Sunk brand and spear and bended bow, 

In osiers pale and copses low ; 

It seemed as if their mother Earth 
20 Had swallow'd up her warlike birth. ' 

The wind's last breath had toss'd in air, 

Pennon, and plaid, and plumage fair, — 

The next but -swept a lone hill-side. 

Where heath and fern were waving wide: 
25 The sun's last glance was glinted back, 

From spear and glaive, from targe and jack,— 

The next, all unreflected, shone 

On bracken green, and cold grey stone. 

XI 

Fitz-James look'd round — yet scarce believed 
The witness that his sight received ; 
Such apparition well might seem 
Delusion of a dreadful dream. 



194 THE LADY OF THt. LAKE 

Sir Eoderick in suspense he eyed, ^ 

And to his look the Chief replied, 

*'Fear nought — nay, that I need not say — 

But — doubt not aught from mine array. 

Thou art my guest ; — I pledged my word 

As far as Coilantogle ford: ^ 

N^or would I call a clansman's brand 

For aid against one valiant hand. 

Though on our strife lay every vale 

Eent by the Saxon from the Gael. 

So move we on; — I only meant 15 

To show the reed on which you leant, 

Deeming this path you might pursue 

Without a pass from Eoderick Dhu." 

They moved: — I said Fitz- James was bravOj 

As ever knight that belted glaive ; ao 

Yet dare not say, that now his blood 

Kept on its wont and temper 'd flood, 

As, following Eoderick 's stride, he drew 

That seeming lonesome pathway through, 

Which yet, by fearful proof, was rife as 

With lances, that, to take his life. 

Waited but signal from a guide. 

So late dishonour 'd and defied. 

Ever, by stealth, his eye sought round 

The vanish'd guardians of the ground, l 

And still, from copse and heather deep, 

Fancy saw spear and broadsword peep. 

And in the plover's shrilly strain, 

The signal whistle heard again. 



CANTO FIFTH 195 

35 Nor breathed he free till far behind 
The pass was left ; for then they wind 
Along a wide and level green, 
Where neither tree nor tuft was seen, 
JSTor rush nor bush of broom was near, 

40 To hide a bonnet or a spear. 

XII 

The Chief in silence strode before, 

And reached that torrent's sounding shore, 

Which, daughter of three mighty lakes. 

From Vennachar in silver breaks, 
5 Sweeps through the plain, and ceaseless mines 

On Bochastle the mouldering lines. 

Where Eome, the Empress of the world, 

Of yore her eagle wings unfurl'd. 

And here his course the Chieftain staid, 
10 Threw down his target and his plaid, 

And to the Lowland warrior said — 

*'Bold Saxon! to his promise just, 

Vich-Alpine has discharged his trust. 

This murderous Chief, this ruthless man, 
15 This head of a rebellious clan. 

Hath led thee safe, through watch and ward, 

Far past Clan-Alpine's outmost guard. 

Now, man to man, and steel to steel, 

A Chieftain's vengeance thou shalt feel. 
20 See, here, all vantageless I stand, 

Arm'd, like thyself, with single brand: 



196 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

For this is Coilantogle ford, 

And thoii must keep thee with thy sword.' 

XIII 

The Saxon paused:— ''I ne'er delay'd, 

When f oeman bade me draw my blade . 

Nay more, brave Chief, I vow'd thy death; 

Yet sure thy fair and generous faith, 

And my deep debt for life preserved, n 

A better meed have well deserved : 

Can nought but blood our feud atone? 

Are there no means?'' — ''No, Stranger, none! 

And hear, — to fire thy flagging zeal, — 

The Saxon cause rests on thy steel; la 

For thus spoke Fate, by prophet bred 

Between the living and the dead; 

'Who spills the foremost f oeman *s life. 

His part}^ conquers in the strife.' " 

"Then, by my word," the Saxon said, 15 

"The riddle is already read. 

Seek yonder brake beneath the cliff, — 

There lies Eed Murdoch, stark and stiff. 

Thus Fate has solved her prophecy, 

Then yield to Fate, and not to me. ^ 

To James, at Stirling, let us go, 

When, if thou wilt be still his foe, 

Or if the King shall not agree 

To grant thee grace and favour free, 

I plight mine honour, oath, and word, ^ 

That, to thy native strengths restored. 



CANTO FIFTH' 197 

With each advantage shalt thou stand, 
That aids thee now to guard thy land.'* 

XIV • 

Dark h'ghtning fiash'd from Koderick's eye-^ 

*' Soars thy presumption, then, so high, 

Because a wretched kern ye slew, 

Homage to name to Eoderick Dhu? 
5 He yields not, he, to man nor Fate! 

Thou add'st but fuel to my hate- — 

My clansman's blood demands revenge. 

Not yet prepared? — By heaven, I change 

My thought, and hold thy valour light 
to As that of some vain carpet knight, 

Who ill deserved my courteous care, 

And whose best boast is but to wear 

A braid of his fair lady's hair." — 

*'I thank thee, Eoderick, for the word! 
15 It nerves my heart, it steels my sword; 

For I have sworn this braid to stain 

In the best blood that warms thy vein. 

Now, truce, farewell! and, ruth, begone!— 

Yet think not that by thee alone, 
20 Proud Chief! can courtesy be shown; 

Though not from copse, or heath, or cairn, 

Start at my whistle clansmen stern. 

Of this small horn one feeble blast 

Would fearful odds against thee cast. 
25 But fear not— doubt not — which thou wilt— 

We t^V this quarrel hilt to hilt. " — 



198 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Then each at once his falchion drew, 
Each on the ground his scabbard threw. 
Each look'd to sun, and stream, and plain. 
As what they ne'er might see again; 
Then foot, and point, and eye opposed, 
In dubious strife they darkly closed. 



XV 



111 fared it then with Eoderick Dhu, 

That on the field his targe he threw. 

Whose brazen studs and tough bull -hide 

Had death so often dash'd aside; 

For, train'd abroad his arms to wield, a 

Fitz- James's blade was sword and shield. 

He practised every pass and ward. 

To thrust, to strike, to feint, to guard; 

While less expert, though stronger far, 

The Gael maintain'd unequal war. lo 

Three times in closing strife they stood. 

And thrice the Saxon blade drank blood; 

No stinted draught, no scanty tide. 

The gushing flood the tartans dyed. 

Fierce Eoderick felt the fatal drain, is 

And shower 'd his blows like wintry rain; 

And, as fii'm rock, or castle-roof. 

Against the winter shower is proof, 

The foe, invulnerable still, 

Foil'd his wild rage by steady skill; 20 



CANTO FIFTH 199 

Till, at advantage ta'en, his brand 
Forced Eoderick's weapon from hlz .land. 
And backward borne upon the lea, 
Brought the proud Chieftain to his knee. 



XVI 

**Now, yield thee, or by Him who made 
The world, thy heart's blood dyes my blade!"- 
*'Thy threats, thy mercy, I defy! 
Let recreant yield, who fears to die." 

6 — Like adder darting from his coil. 
Like wolf that dashes through the toil. 
Like mountain-cat who guards her young, 
Full at Pitz- James's throat he sprung; 
Eeceived, but reck'd not of a wound, 

10 And lock'd his arms his foeman round. — 
Now, gallant Saxon, hold thine own ! 
No maiden's hand is round thee thrown! 
That desperate grasp thy frame might feel. 
Through bars of brass and triple steel ! — 

15 They tug, they strain! down, down they go 
The Gael above, Fitz-James below. 
The Chieftain's gripe his throat compress'd 
His knee was planted in his breast ; 
His clotted locks he backward threw, 

20 Across his brow his hand he drew. 
From blood and mist to clear his sight, 
Then gleam'd aloft his dagger bright !-= 



200 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

— But hate and fury ill supplied 

The stream of life's exhausted tide, 

And all too late the advantage came, 25 

To turn the odds of deadly game ; 

For, while the dagger gleam 'd on high, 

Reel'd soul and sense, reel'd brain and eye 

Down came the blow! but in the heath 

The erring blade found bloodless sheath. 3o 

The struggling foe may now unclasp 

The fainting Chief's relaxing grasp; 

Unwounded from the dreadful close, 

But breathless all, Fitz-James arose. 

XVII 

He falter'd thanks to Heaven for life, 

Redeem'd, unhoped, from desperate strife; 

Next on his foe his look he cast, 

Whose every gasp appear'd his last; 

In Roderick's gore he dipped the braid, — 5 

''Poor Blanche! thy wrongs are dearly paid: 

Yet with thy foe must die, or live. 

The praise that faith and valour give." 

With that he blew a bugle-note. 

Undid the collar from his throat, lo 

Unbonneted, and by the wave 

Sate down his brow ana fiands to lave. 

Then faint afar are heard the feet 

Of rushing steeds in gallop fleet ; 

The sounds increase, and now are seen 15 

Four mounted squires in Lincoln green ; 



CANTO FIFTH 20i 

Two who bear lance, and two who lead, 

By loosen'd rein, a saddled steed; 

Each onward held his headlong course, 
20 And by Fitz-James rein'd up his horse,— 

With wonder view'd the bloody spofc — 

— "Exclaim not, gallants! question not.— 

You, Herbert and Luffness, alight. 

And bind the wounds of yonder knight *, 
25 Let the grey palfrey bear his weight, 

We destined for a fairer freight, 

And bring him on to Stirling straight; 

I will before at better speed. 

To seek fresh horse and fitting weed. 
30 The sun rides high; — I must be boune, 

To see the archer-game at noon; 

But lightly Bayard clears the lea. — 

De Vaux and Herries, follow me. 

XVIII 

*' Stand, Bayard, stand!" — the steed obey'd^ 

With arching neck and bended head, 

And glancing eye and quivering ear 

As if he loved his lord to hear. 
5 No foot Fitz-James in stirrup staid, 

No grasp upon the saddle laid. 

But wreath'd his left hand in the mane, 

And lightly bounded from the plain, 

Turn'd on the horse his armed heel, 
10 x\nd stirr'd his courage with the steel. 



202 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Bounded the fiery steed in air, 

The rider sate erect and fair, 

Then like a bolt from steel crossbow 

Forth lannch'd, along the plain they go. 

They dash'd that rapid torrent through, 

And up Carhonie's hill they flew; 

Still at the gallop prick'd the Knight, 

His merry-men follow'd as they might. 

Along thy banks, swift Teith! they ride. 

And in the race they mock thy tide ; 

Torry and Lendrick now are past. 

And Deanstown lies behind them cast ; 

They rise, the banner 'd towers of Doune, 

They sink in distant woodland soon ; 

Blair-Drummond sees the hoofs strike fire. 

They sweep like breeze through Ochtertyre ; 

They mark just glance and disappear 

The lofty brow of ancient Kier ; 

They bathe their courser's sweltering sides, 

Dark Forth! amid thy sluggish tides, 

And on the opposing shore take ground, 

With plash, with scramble, and with bound. 

Eight-hand they leave thy cliffs, Craig-Forth! 

And soon the bulwark of the North, 

Grey Stirling, with her towers and town, 

Upon their fleet career look'd down. ^ 

XIX 

As up the flinty path they strain'd 
Sudden his steed the leader rein'd; 



CANTO FIFTH , 203 

A signal to his squire he flung, 

Who instant to his stirrup sprung: — 
5 "Seest thou, De Vaux, yon woodsman grey, 

Who town-ward holds the rocky way, 

Of stature tall and poor array? 

Mark'st thou the firm, yet active stride. 

With which he scales the mountain-side? 
10 Know'st thou from whence he comes, or whom?'' 

''No, by my word; — a burly groom 

He seems, who in the field or chase 

A baron's train would nobly grace." — ■ 

''Out, out, De Vaux! can fear supply, 
15 And jealousy, no sharper eye? 

Afar, ere to the hill he drew, 

That stately form and step I knew; 

Like form in Scotland is not seen. 

Treads not such step on Scottish green. 
20 'Tis James of Douglas, by Saint Serle! 

The uncle of the banish'd Earl. 

Away, away, to court, to show 

The near approach of di*eaded foe : 

The King must stand upon his guard; 
25 Douglas and he must meet prepared." 

Then right-hand wheePd their steeds, and straight 

They won the castle's postern gate. 



XX 



The Douglas, who had bent his way 
From Cambus-Kenneth's abbey grey, 



204 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Now, as he climb'd the rocky shelf, 

Held sad communion with himself : — 

''Yes! all is true my fears could frame; a 

A prisoner lies the noble Grasme, 

And fiery Eoderick soon will feel 

The vengeance of the royal steel. 

I, only I, can ward their fate, — 

God grant the ransom come not late ! j/[\ 

The Abbess hath her promise given, 

My child shall be the bride of heayen ;— 

— Be pardon'd one repining tear ! 

For He, who gave her, knows how dear. 

How excellent ! — but that is by, iS 

And now my business is — to die. 

— Ye towers! within whose circuit dread 

A Douglas by his sovereign bled; 

And thou, sad and fatal mound! 

That oft has heard the death-axe sound, ^@ 

As on the noblest of the land 

Eell the stern headsman's bloody hand,— 

The dungeon, block, and nameless tomb 

Prepare — for Douglas seeks his doom! 

— But hark! what blithe and jolly peal ^ 

Makes the Franciscan steeple reel? 

And see ! upon the crowded street. 

In motley groups what masquers meet ! 

Banner and pageant, pipe and drum, 

And merry morrice-dancers come. ^ 

I guess, by all this quaint array. 

The burghers hold their sports to-day. 



CANTO FIFTH 205 

James will be there ; lie loves such show, 

Where the good yeoman bends his bow, 
8S And the tough wrestler foils his foe, 

As well as where, in proud career. 

The high-born tilter shivers spear. 

I'll follow to the Castle-park, 

And play my prize ; — King James shall mark, 
40 If age has tamed these sinews stark, 

Whose force so oft, in happier days. 

His boyish wonder loved to praise." 



XXI 

The Castle gates were open flung. 

The quivering drawbridge rock'd and rung, 

And echo'd loud the flinty street 

Beneath the coursers' clattering feet, 
5 As slowly down the steep descent 

Fair Scotland's King and nobles went. 

While all along the crowded way 

Was jubilee and loud huzza. 

And ever James was bending low, 
10 To his white jennet's saddle-bow. 

Doffing his cap to city dame. 

Who smiled and blush'd for pride and shame. 

And well the simperer might be vain,— 

He chose the fairest of the train. 
15 Gravely he greets each city sire, 

Commends each pageant's quaint attire, 



206 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Gives to the dancers thanks aloud, 
And smiles and nods upon the crowd, 
Who rend the heavens with their acclaims, 
''Long live the Commons' King, King James!" 
Behind the King throng'd peer and knight, 
And noble dame and damsel bright. 
Whose fiery steeds ill brook'd the stay 
Of the steep street and crowded way. 
— But in the train you might discern 
Dark lowering brow and visage stern ; 
There nobles mourn 'd their pride restrained, 
And the mean burgher's joys disdain'd; 
And chiefs, who, hostage for their clan, 
Were each from home a banish'd man. 
There thought upon their own grey tower. 
Their waving woods, their feudal power, 
And deem'd themselves a shameful part 
Of pageant which they cursed in heart. 



XXII 

Now, in the Castle-park, drew out 
Their chequer 'd bands the joyous rout. 
There morricers, with bell at heel, 
And blade in hand, their mazes wheel ; 
But chief, beside the butts, there stand 
Bold Eobin Hood and all his band, — 
Friar Tuck with quarterstaff and cowl, 
Old Scathelocke with his surly scowl, 



CANTO FIFTH 20*? 

Maid Marion, fair as ivory bone, 
io Scarlet, and Mutch, and Little John; 

Their bugles challenge all that will, 

In archery to prove their skill. 

The Douglas bent a bow of might, — . 

His first shaft centred in the white, 
15 And when in turn he shot again. 

His second split the first in twain. 

From the King's hand must Douglas take 

A silver dart, the archer's stake; 

Fondly he watch'd, with watery eye, 
20 Some answering glance of sympathy, — 

No kind emotion made reply ! 

Indifferent as to archer wight. 

The monarch gave the arrow bright. 

XXIII 

Now, clear the ring! for, hand to hand, 

The manly wrestlers take their stand. 

Two o'er the rest superior rose. 

And proud demanded mightier foes, 
5 Nor call'd in vain; for Douglas came. 

— For life is Hugh of Larbert lame ; 

Scarce better John of Alloa's fare, 

Whom senseless home his comrades beai. 

Prize of the wrestling match, the King 
10 To Douglas gave a golden ring. 

While coldly glanced his eye of blue. 

As frozen drop of wintry dew. 



208 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Douglas would speak, but in his breast 

His struggling soul his words suppressed; 

Indignant then he turn'd him where is 

Their arms the brawny yeomen bare, 

To hm^l the massive bar in air. 

When each his utmost strength had shown , 

The Douglas rent an earth-fast stone 

From its deep bed, then heav'd it high, 20 

And sent the fragment through the sky, 

A rood beyond the farthest mark ; — 

And still in Stirling's royal park, 

The grey-hair'd sires, who know the past, 

To strangers point the Douglas-cast, jjs 

And moralize on the decay 

Of Scottish strength in modern day.. 



XXIV 

The vale with loud applauses rang, 
The Ladies' Eock sent back the clang. 
The King, with look unmoved, bestow'd 
A purse well-fiU'd with pieces broad. 
Indignant smiled the Douglas proud, 
And threw tiie gold among the crowd, 
Wiio now, with anxious wonder, scan, 
And sharper glance, the dark grey man; 
Till whispers rose among the throng. 
That heart so free, and hand so strong, 
Must to the Douaias blood belong, 



CANTO FIFTH 209 

The old men mark'd and shook the headi . 

To see his hair with silver spread, 

And wink'd aside, and told each son, 
i5 Of feats upon the English done, 

Ere Douglas of the stalwart hand 

Was exiled from his native land. 

The women praised his stately form, 

Though wreck'd by many a winter's storm; 
20 The youth with awe and wonder saw 
, His strength surpassing Nature's law. 

Thus judged, as is their wont, the crowd, 

Till murmur rose to clamours loud. 

But not a glance from that proud ring 
^^ Of peers who circled round the King, 

With Douglas held communion kind, 

Or call'd the banish'd man to mind; 

No, not from those who, at the chase, 

Once held his side the honour 'd place, 
^^' Begirt his board, and, in the field. 

Found safety underneath his shield; 
' For he, whom royal eyes disown. 

When was his form to courtiers known! 



XXV 

The Monarch saw the gambols flag, 

And bade let loose a gallant s^ag. 

Whose pride, the holiday to crown. 

Two favourite greyhounds should pull down, 



210 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

That yenison free, and Bordeaux wine, 5 

Might serve the archery to dine. 

But Lufra, — whom from Douglas' side 

Nor bribe nor tlii^eat could e'er divide, 

The fleetest hound in all the North, — 

Brave Lufra saw, and darted forth. Sd 

She left the royal hounds mid- way, 

And dashing on the antler 'd prey, 

Sunk her sharp muzzle in his flank. 

And deep the flowing life-blood drank. 

The King's stout huntsman saw the sport u 

By strange intruder broken short, 

Game up, and with his leash unbound. 

In anger struck the noble hound. 

-^The Douglas had endured, that" morn. 

The King's cold look, the nobles' scorn, 20 

And last, and worst to spirit proud, 

Had borne the pity of the crowd ; 

But Lufra had been fondly bred, 

To share his board, to watch his bed. 

And oft would Ellen, Lufra 's neck 25 

In maiden glee with garlands deck ; 

They were such playmates, that with name 

Of Lufra, Ellen's image came. 

His stifled wrath is brimming high, 

In darken'd brow and flashing eye; 30 

As waves before the bark divide. 

The crowd gave way before his stride ; 

Needs but a buffet and no more, 

The groom lies senseless in his gore. 



CANTO FIFTH 211 



^ Such blow no other hand could deal, 
Though gauntleted in glove of steel. 



XXVI 

Then clamour'd loud the royal train, 
And brandish 'd swords and staves amain, 
But stern the Baron's warning — ''Back! 
Back, on your lives, ye menial pack! 

5 Beware the Douglas. — Yes! behold, 
King James! the Douglas, doom'd of old, 
And vainly sought for near and far, 
A victim to atone the war, 
A willing victim, now attends, 

10 Nor craves thy grace but for his friends."— 
"Thus is my clemency repaid? 
Presumptuous Lord!" the monarch said; 
"Of thy mis-proud ambitious clan, 
Thou, James of Bothwell, wert the man, 

15 The only man, in whom a foe 
My woman-mercy would not know: 
But shall a Monarch's presence brook 
Injurious blow, and haughty look? — 
What ho! the Captain of our Guard! 

20 Give the offender fitting ward. — 

Break off the sports!" — for tumult rose, 
And yeomen 'gan to bend their bows,^ 
"Break off the sports!" he said, and frown'd, 
And bid our horsemen clear the ground." 



€< 



212 CHE LADY OF THE LAKE 

XXVII 

Then iiproftr wild and misarray 

Marr'd the fair form of festal day. 

The horsemen prick 'd among the crowd, 

Repeird by threats and insult loud; 

To earth are borne the old and weak, 6 

The timorous fly, the women shriek ; 

With flint, with shaft, with staff, with bar, 

The hardier urge tumultuous war. 

At once round Douglas darkly sweep 

The royal spears in circle deep, » 

And slowly scale the pathway steep; 

While on the rear in thunder pour 

The rabble with disorder'd roar. 

With grief the noble Douglas saw 

The Commons rise against the law, 

And to the leading soldier said, — 

*'Sir John of Hyndford! 'twas my blade, 

That knighthood on thy shoulder laid; 

For that good deed, permit me then 

A word with these misguided men. 

XXVIII 



C( 



Hear, gentle friends ! ere yet for me. 
Ye break the bands of fealty. 
My life, my honour, and my cause, 
I tender free to Scotland's laws. 
Are these so weak as must require 
The aid of your misguided ire? 



15 



00 



CANTO FIFTH 215 

Or, if I suffer causeless wrong, 

Is then my selfish rage so strong, 

My sense of public weal so low, 
10 That, for mean vengeance on a foe, 

Those cords of love I should unbind, 

Which knit my country and my kind? 

Oh no !" Believe, in yonder tower 

It will not soothe m5^captive hour, 
15 To know those spears our foes should dreadj 

For me in kindred gore are red ; 

To know, in fruitless brawl begun, ^ 

For me, that mother wails her son; 

For me, that widow's mate expires; 
■^0 For me, that orphans weep their sires; 

That patriots mourn insulted laws. 

And curse the Douglas for the cause. 

let your patience ward such ill, 

And keep your right to love me still!'* 



XXIX 

The crowd's wild fury sunk agdn 
In tears, as tempests melt in rain. 
With lifted hands and eyes, they pray'd 
For blessings on his generous head, 
Who for his country felt alone. 
And prized her blood beyond his own. 
Old men, upon the verge of life, 
Bless'd him who stay'd the civil strife; 



214 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

And mothers held their babes on high, 

The self-devoted Chief to spy, le 

Triumphant over wrongs and ire, 

To whom the prattlers owed a sire: 

Even the rongh soldier's heart was moved; 

As if behind some bier beloved. 

With trailing arms and drooping head, 15 

The Douglas up the hill he led, 

And at the Castle's battled verge. 

With sighs resign 'd his honour 'd charge. 



XXX 

The offended Monarch rode apart. 

With bitter thought and swelling heart, 

And would not now vouchsafe again 

Through Stirling streets to lead his train.^ 

*'0 Lennox, who would wish to rule 5 

This changeling crowd, this common fool? 

Hear'st thou," he said, "the loud acclaim. 

With which they shout the Douglas name? 

With like acclaim, the vulgar throat 

Strain'd for King James their morning note; le 

With like acclaim they hail'd the day 

When first I broke the Douglas' sway; 

And like acclaim would Douglas greet, 

If he could hurl me from my seat. 

Who o'er the herd would wish to reign, le 

Fantastic, fickle, fierce, and vain! 



CANTO FIFTH S16 

Vain as the leaf upon the stream, 
And fickle as a changeful dream; 
Fantastic as a woman's mood, 
so And fierce as Frenzy's fever 'd blood. 
Thou many -headed monster-thing, 

who could wish to be thy king ! 

XXXI 

"But soft! what messenger of speed 
Spurs hitherward his panting steed? 

1 guess his cognizance afar — 

What from our cousin, John of Mar?" — 
5 ''He prays, my liege, your sports keep bound 

Within the safe and guarded ground : 

For some foul purpose yet unknown, — 

Most sure for evil to the throne, — 

The outlaw 'd Chieftain, Eoderick Dhu, 
10 Has summon'd his rebellious crew; 

'Tis said, in James of Both well's aid 

These loose banditti stand array'd. 

The Earl of Mar, this morn, from Donne, 

To break their muster march 'd, and soon 
15 Your grace will hear of battle fought; 

But earnestly the Earl besought. 

Till for such danger he provide. 

With scanty train you will not ride." 

XXXII 

^'Thou warn'st me I have done amiss,— 
I should have earlier look'd to this: 



216 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

I lost it in '.his bustling day. 

— Eetrace with speed thy former way ; 

Spare not for spoiling of thy steed, 6 

The best of mine shall be thy meed. 

Say to our faithful Lord of Mar, 

We do forbid the intended war : 

Eoderick, this morn, in single fight, 

Was made our prisoner by a knight ; io 

And Douglas hath himself and cause 

Submitted to our kingdom's laws. 

The tidings of their leaders lost 

Will soon dissolve the mountain hgst, 

ISTor would we that the vulgar feel 15 

For their Chief's crimes, avenging steel. 

Bear Mar our message, Braco; fly!" — 

He turn'd his steed, — ''My liege, I hie,~ 

Yet, ere I cross this lily lawn, 

I fear the broadswords will be drawn." 2g 

The turf the flying courser spurn'd. 

And to his towers the King retm*n'd. 



XXXIII 

111 with King James's mood that day, 
Suited gay feast and minstrel lay ; 
Soon were dismiss 'd the courtly throng. 
And soon cut short the festal song. 
Nor less upon the sadden'd town 
The evening sunk in sorrow down. 



CANTO FIFTH 217 

The burghers spoke of civil jar, 

Of rumour 'd feuds and mountain war, 

Of Moray, Mar, and Eoderick Dhu, 
10 All up in arms: — the Douglas too. 

They mourn'd him pent within the hold, 

''Where stout Earl William was of old." 

And there his word the speaker staid. 

And finger on his lip he laid, 
15 Or pointed to his dagger blade. 

But jaded horsemen, from the west. 

At eyening to the Castle press 'd; 
. And busy talkers said they bore 

Tidings of fight on Katrine's shore; 
20 At noon the deadly fray begun, 

And lasted till the set of sun. 

Thus giddy rumour shook the town. 

Till closed the Night her pennons brown. 



CANTO SIXTH 



THE GUAKD-ROOM 



The sun, awakening, through the smoky air 

Of the dark city casts a sullen glance, 
Rousing each caitiff to his task of care, 

Of sinful man the sad inheritance ; 
Summoning revellers from the lagging dance, 

Scaring the prowling robber to his den; 
Gilding on battled tower the warder's lance. 

And warning student pale to leave his pen, 
And yield his drowsy eyes to the kind nurse of 
men. 

What various scenes, and, ! what scenes of woe. 

Are witness 'd by that red and struggling beam! 
The fever 'd patient, from his pallet low, 

Through crowded hospital beholds its stream; 
The ruin'd maiden trembles at its gleam. 

The debtor wakes to thought of gyve and Jail, 
The love-lorn wretch starts from tormenting dream ; 

The wakeful mother, by the glimmering pale. 
Trims her sick infant's couch, and soothes his 
feeble wail. 

218 



10 



15 



CANTO SIXTH 21^ 

II 

At dawn the towers of Stirling rang 

With soldier-step and weapon-clang, 

While drums, with rolling note, foretell 

Eelief to weary sentinel. 
5 Through narrow loop and casement barr'd, 

The sunbeams sought the Court of Guard, 

And, struggling with the smoky air, 

Deaden'd the torches' yellow glare. 

In comfortless alliance shone 
10 The lights through arch of blacken'd stone, 

And show'd wild shapes in garb of war, 

Faces deform'd with beard and scar. 

All haggard from the midnight watch, 

And fever 'd with the stern debauch; 
15 For the oak table's massive board, 

Flooded with wine, with fragments stored, 

And beakers drain'd, and cups o'erthrown, 

Show'd in what sport the night had flown. 

Some, weary, snored on floor and bench; 
20 Some labour'd still their thirst to quench; 

Some, chill 'd with watching, spread their hands 

O'er the huge chimney's dying brands, 

While round them, or beside them flung. 

At every step their harness rung. 

Ill 

These drew not for their fields the sword, 
Like tenants of a feudal lord, 



220 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Nor own'd. the patriarchal claim 

Of Chieftain in their leader's name; 

Adventurers they, from far who roved, c 

To live by battle which they loved. 

There the Italian's clouded face, 

The swarthy Spaniard's there you trace; 

The mountain-loving Switzer there 

More freely breathed in mountain-air; lo 

The Fleming there despised the soil, 

That paid so ill the labourer's toil; 

Their rolls show'd French and German name; 

And merry England's exiles came. 

To share, with ill-conceal'd disdain, 15 

Of Scotland's pay the scanty gain. 

All brave in arms, well train'd to wield 

The heavy halberd, brand, and shield ; 

In camps licentious, wild, and bold; 

In pillage fierce and uncontroU'd; 2C 

And now, by holytide and feast. 

From rules of discipline released. 



IV 



They held debate of bloody fray, 

Fought 'twixt Loch Katrine and Achray. • 

Fierce was their speech, and, 'mid their words, 

Their hands oft grappled to their swords ; 

Nor sunk their tone to spare the ear 

Of wounded conn-ades groaning near, 



CANTO SIXTH 22 

Whose mangled limbs, and bodies gored, 

Bore token of the mountain sword, 

Though, neighbouring to the Court of Guard, 
10 Their prayers and feverish wails were heard; 

Sad burden to the ruffian joke, 

And savage oath by fury spoke ! — 

At length up-started John of Brent, 

A veoman from the banks of Trent ; 
15 A stranger to respect or fear. 

In peace a chaser of the deer, 

In host a hardy mutineer. 

But still the boldest of the crew, 

When deed of danger was to do. 
20 He grieved, that day, their games cut short, 

And marr'd the dicer's brawling sport, 

And shouted loud, ^'Eenew the bowl! 

And, while a merry catch I troll. 

Let each the buxom chorus bear, 
•25 Like brethren of the brand and spear." 



SOLDIER S S0:N'G 

Our vicar still preaches that Peter and Poule 
Laid a swinging long curse on the bonny brown 

bowl. 
That there's wrath and despair in the jolly black- 
/ jack. 
And the seven deadly sins in a flagon of sack ; 



322 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Yet whoop, Barnaby! off with thy liquor^ 5 

Drink upsees out, and a fig for the vicar ! 

Our vicar he calls it damnation to sip 

The ripe ruddy dew of a woman's dear lip, 

Says, that Beelzebub lurks in her kerchief so sly. 

And ApoUyon shoots darts from her merry black ic 

eye; 
Yet whoop. Jack! kiss Gillian the quicker. 
Till she bloom like a rose, and a fig for the vicar ! 

Our vicar thus preaches — and why should he not? 
For the dues of his cure are the placket and pot ; 
And 'tis right of his office poor laymen to lurch, is 
Who infringe the domains of our good Mother 

Church. 
Yet whoop, bully-boys! off with your liquor. 
Sweet Marjorie's the word, and a fig for the vicar! 

VI 

The warder's challenge, heard without, 

Staid in mid-roar the merry shout. 

A soldier to the portal went, — 

"Here is old Bertram, sirs, of Ghent; 

And, — beat for jubilee the drum ! ^ 

A maid and minstrel with him come." 

Bertram, a Fleming, grey and scarr'd, 

Was entering now the Court of Guard, 

A harper with him, and in plaid 

All muffled close, a mountain maid, lo 



CANTO SIXTH 22c 

Who backward shrunk, to 'scape the view 

Of the loose scene and boisterous crew. 

"What news?" they roar'd: — "I only know, 

From noon till eve we fought with foe, 
15 As wild and as untameable 

As the rude mountains where they dwell ; 

On both sides store of blood is lost, 
, Nor much success can either boast." — 

"But whence thy captives, friend? such spoil 
20 As theirs must needs reward thy toil. 

Old dost thou wax, and wars grow sharp ; 

Thou now hast glee-maiden and harp ! 

Get thee an ape, and trudge the land, 

The leader of a juggler band." — 

VII 

*'No, comrade; — no such fortune mine. 

After the fight these sought our line. 

That aged harper and the girl, 

And, having audience of the Earl, 
6 Mar bade I should purvey them steed, 

And bring them hitherward with speed. 

Forbear your mirth and rude alarm, 

For none shall do them shame or harm." — • 

"Hear ye his boast?" cried John of Brent, 
10 Ever to strife and jangling bent ; 

"Shall he strike doe beside our lodge, 

And yet the jealous niggard grudge 

To pay the forester his fee? 



224 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

I'll have my share, howe'er it be, 
Despite of Moray, Mar, or thee." 
Bertram his forward step withstood; 
And, burning in his' vengeful mood, 
Old Allan, though unfit for strife. 
Laid hand upon his dagger-knife ; 
But Ellen boldly stepp'd between. 
And dropp'd at once the tartan screen: — 
So, from his morning cloud, appears 
The sun of May, through summer tears. 
The savage soldiery, amazed, 
As on descended angel gazed ; 
Even hardy Brent, abash 'd and tamed, 
Stood half admiring, half ashamed. 



VIII 

Boldly she spoke, — "Soldiers, attend! 
My father was the soldier's friend; 
Cheer'd him in camps, in marches led, 
And with him in the battle bled. 
Xot from the valiant, or the strong. 
Should exile's daughter suffer wrong." — - 
Answer'd,De Brent, most forward still 
In every feat or good or ill, — 
''I shame me of the part I play'd: 
And thou an outlaw's child, poor maid! 
An outlaw I by forest laws. 
And merry Needwood knows the cause* 



CANTO SIXTH 325 

Poor Eose, — if Rose be living now," — 

He wiped his iron eye and brow, — 
15 "Must bear such age, I think, as thou. 

Hear ye, my mates ; — I go to call 

The Captain of our watch to hall : 

There lies my halberd on the floor ; 

And he that steps my halberd o'er, 
20 To do the maid injurious part. 

My shaft shall quiver in his heart! — 

Beware loose speech, or jesting rough: 

Ye all know John de Brent. Enough.'' 

IX 

Their Captain came, a gallant young, — 

(Of TuUibardine's house he sprung,) 

Nor wore he yet the spurs of knight ; 

Gay was his mien, his humour light, 
5 And, though by courtesy controll'd, 

Forward his speech, his bearing bold. 

The high-born maiden ill could brook 

The scanning of his curious look 

And dauntless eye; — and yet, iu sooth, 
10 Young Lewis was a generous youth ; 

But Ellen's lovely face and mien, 

111 suited to the garb and scene, 
• Might lightly bear construction strange, 

And give loose fancy scope to range. 
U5 "Welcome to Stirling towers, fair maid! 

Come ye to seek a champion's aid, 



226 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

On palfrey white, wifch harper hoar, 

Like errant damosel of yore? 

Does thy high quest a knight require, 

Or may the venture suit a squire?" — 3( 

Her dark eye flash'd; — she paused and sigh'd, — 

"0 what have I to do with pride! — 

- — Through scenes of sorrow, shame, and strife, 

A suppliant for a father's life, 

I crave an audience of the King. 21 

Behold, to back my suit, a ring, 

The royal pledge of grateful claims, 

Given by the Monarch to Fitz-James. 



>> 



X 

The signet-ring young Lewis took, 

With deep respect and alter'd look; 

And said, — ''This ring our duties own; 

And pardon, if to worth unknown, 

In semblance mean obscurely veil'd, £ 

Lady, in aught my folly fail'd. 

Soon as the day flings wide his gates. 

The King shall know what suitor waits. 

Please you, meanwhile, in fitting bower 

Kepose you till his waking hour ; ic 

Female attendance shall obey 

Your best, for service or array. 

Permit I marshal you the way." 

But, ere she followed, with the grace 

And open bounty of her race, is 



CANTO SIXTH 227 

She bade her slender purse be shared 

Among the soldiers of the guard. 

The rest with thanks their guerdon took ; 

But Brent, with shy and awkward look, 
20 On the reluctant maiden's hold 

Forced bluntly back the proffer 'd gold; — 

''Forgive a haughty English heart. 

And forget its ruder part ! 

The vacant purse shall be my share, 
35 Which in my barret-cap I'll bear. 

Perchance, in jeopardy of war, 

Where gayer crests may keep afar." 

With thanks, — 'twas all she could — the maid 

His rugged courtesy repaid. 



XI 

When Ellen forth with Lewis went, 
Allan made suit to John of Brent : — • 
"My lady safe, let your grace 
Give me to see my master's face! 

5 His minstrel I, — to share his doom 
Bound from the cradle to the tomb. 
Tenth in descent, since first my sires 
Waked for his noble house their lyres, 
Nor one of all the race was known 

10 But prized its weal above their own. 
With the Chief's birth begins our care; 
Our harp must soothe the infant heir. 
Teach the youth tales of fight, and grace 



228 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

His earliest feat of field or chase ; 
In peace, in war, our rank we keep, 
We cheer his board, we soothe his sleop, 
Nor leave him till we po^i our verse, — 
A doleful tribute! — o'er his hearse. 
Then let me share his captive lot ; 
It is my right — deny it not!" — 
"Little we reck," said John of Brent, 
"We Southern men, of long descent; 
Nor wot we how a name — a word — 
Makes clansmen vassals to a lord : 
Yet kind my noble landlord's part, — • 
God bless the house of Beaudesert ! 
And, but I loved to drive the deer, 
More than to guide the labouring steer, 
I had not dwelt an outcast here. 
Come, good old Minstrel, follow me; 
Thy Lord and Chieftain shalt thou see." 

XII 

Then, from a rusted iron hook, 

A bunch of ponderous keys he took, 

Lighted a torch, and Allan led 

Through grated arch and passage dread. 

Portals they pass'd, where, deep within, 

Spoke prisoner's moan, and fetters' din; 

Through rugged vaults, where, loosely stored, 

Lay wheel, and axe, and headsman's sword. 

And many an hideous engine grim. 

For wrenching joint, and criishing limb, 



CANTO SIXTH 239 

By artist form'd, who deem'd it shame 

And sin to give their work a name. 

They halted at a low brow'd porch, 

And Brent to Allan gave the torch, 
15 While bolt and chain he backward roll'd, 

And made the bar nnhasp its hold. 

They enter'd: — 'twas a prison-room 

Of stern security and gloom, 

Yet not a dungeon ; for the day 
20 Through lofty gratings found its way, 

And rude and antique garniture 

Deck'd the sad walls and oaken floor; 

Such as the rugged days of old 

Deem'd fit for captive noble's hold. 
25 "Here," said De Brent, 'Hhou mayst remain 

Till the Leech visit him again. 

Strict is his charge, the warders tell, 

To tend the noble prisoner well." 

Retiring then the bolt he drew, 
30 And the lock's murmurs growl'd anew. 

Roused at the sound, from lowly bed 

A captive feebly raised his head ; 

The wondering Minstrel look'd, and knew— 

Not his dear lord, but Roderick Dhu ! ' 

35 For, come from where CI an- Alpine fought. 

They, erring, deem'd the Chief he sought. 

XIII 

As the tall ship, whose lofty prore 
Shall never stem the billows more, 



230 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Deserted by her gallant band, 

Amid the breakers lies astrand. — 

So, on his conch, lay Eoderick Dhu! ^ 

And oft his fever'd limbs he threw 

In toss abrupt, as when her sides 

Lie rocking in the advancing tides, 

That shake her frame with ceaseless beat, 

Yet cannot heave her from her seat ; — lo 

! how nnlike her course at sea ! 

Or his free step on hill and lea ! — 

Soon as the Minstrel he could scan, 

—"What of thy lady?— of my clan?— 

My mother? — Douglas? — tell me all? 16 

Have they been ruin'd in my fall? 

Ah, yes ! or wherefore art thou here ! 

fet speak, — speak boldly, — do not fear."— 

(For Allan, who his mood well knew. 

Was choked with grief and terror too.) 20 

"Who fought — who fled? — Old man, be brief;—- 

Some might — for they had lost their Chief. 

Who basely live? — who bravely died?" 

^'0, calm thee. Chief!" the Minstrel cried, 

"Ellen is safe;" — "For that thank Heaven!" — 25 

"And hopes are for the Douglas given; — 

The Lady Margaret too is well ; 

And, for thy clan, — on field or fell, 

Has never harp of minstrel told. 

Of combat fought so true and bold. 36 

Thy stately Pine is yet unbent, 

Though many a goodly bough is rent. " 



CANTO SIXTH 231 



XIV 



The Chieftain rear'd his form on high, 
And fever's fire was in his eye ; 
But ghastly pale, and livid streaks 
Cheqner'd his swarthy brow and cheeks. 

5 — "Hark, Minstrel! I have heard thee play, 
With measure bold, on festal day, 
In yon lone isle, . . . again where ne'er 
Shall harper play, or warrior hear ! . . . 
That stirring air that peals on high, 

10 O'er Dermid's race our victory. — 

Strike it ! — and then, (for well thou canst,) 
Free from thy minstrel spirit glanced. 
Fling me the picture of the fight, 
When met my clan the Saxon might. 

15 I'll listen, till my fancy hears 

The clang of swords, the crash of spears! 
These grates, these walls, shall vanish then. 
For the fair field of fighting men, 
And my free spirit burst away, 

m As if it soar'd from battle fray." 

The trembling Bard with awe obey'd, — 
Slow on the harp his hand he laid ; 
But soon remembrance of the sight 
He witness'd from the mountain's height^ 

25 With what old Bertram told at night, 
Awaken'd the full power of song, 
And bore him in career along ;— 



233 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

As shallop laimcli'd on river's tide, 
That slow and fearful leaves the side, 
But, when it feels the middle stream, 
Drives downward swift as lightning's beam, 

XV 

BATTLE or BEAL' AX DUII^E 

*'The Minstrel came once more to view 
The eastern ridge of Benvenue, 
For ere he parted, he would say 
Farewell to lovely Loch Achray — 
Where shall he find in foreign land, 
So lone a lake, so sweet a strand ! 
There is no breeze upon the fern, 

Nor ripple on the lake. 
Upon her eyry nods the erne, 

The deer has sought the brake; 
The small birds will not sing aloud, 

The springing trout lies still, 
So darkly glooms yon thunder cloud. 
That swathes, as with a purple shroud, 

Benledi's distant hill. 
Is it the thunder's solemn sound 
That mutters deep and dread. 
Or echoes from the groaning ground 

The warrior's measured tread? 
Is it the lightning's quivering glance 

That on the thicket streams, 
Or do they flash on spear and lance 



CANTO SIXTH 23S 

The sun's retiring beams? 
— I see the dagger-crest of Mar, 
25 I see the Moray's silver star, 

Wave o'er the cloud of Saxon war> 
> That up the lake comes winding far ! 
To hero bound for battle-strife, 
Or bard of martial lay, 
30 'Tvvere worth ten years of peaceful life, 
One glance at their array ! 

XVI 

*' Their light-arm'd archers far and near 

Survey 'd the tangled ground, 
Their centre ranks, with pike and spear, 

A twilight forest frown'd, 
5 Their barbed horsemen, in the rear, 

The stern battalia crown'd. 
No cymbal clash'd, no clarion rang,' 

Still were the pipe and drum ; 
Save heavy tread, and armour's clang, 
*o The sullen march was dumb. 

There breathed no wind their crests to shake. 

Or wave their flags abroad ; 
Scarce the frail aspen seem'd to quake, 

That shadow'd o'er their road. 
^5 Their vaward scouts no tidings bring, 

Can rouse no lurking foe, 
Nor spy a trace of living thing. 

Save when they stirr'd the roe; 



234 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

The host moves, like a deep-sea wave, 

Where rise no rocks its pride to brave, so 

High-swelling, dark, and slow. 
The lake is pass'd, and now they gain 
A narrow and a broken plain, 
Before the Trosachs' rugged jaws; 
And here the horse and spearmen pause, 2z 

While, to explore the dangerous glen. 
Dive through the pass the archer -men. 



XVII 

''At once there rose so wild a yell 

Within that dark and narrow dell. 

As all the fiends, from heaven that fell, 

Had peal'd the banner-cry of hell ! 

Forth from the pass in tumult driven, i 

Like chaff before the wind of heaven. 

The archery appear : 
For life ! for life ! their plight they ply— 
And shriek, and shout, and battle-cry. 
And plaids and bonnets waving high, is 

And broadswords flashing to the sky, 

Are maddening in the rear. 
Onward they drive, in dreadful race. 

Pursuers and pursued; 
Before that tide of flight and chase, 15 

How shall it keep its rooted place, 

The spearmen's twilight wood?— 



CANTO SIXTH 235 

^Down, down,' cried Mar, 'your lances down! 
Bear back both friend and foe!' — 
20 Like reeds before the tempest's frown, 
That serried grove of lances brown 

. At once lay levell'd^ow; 
And closely shouldering side to side, 
The bristling ranks the onset bide. — 
25 'We'll quell the savage mountaineer, 
As their Tinchel cows the game! 
They come as fleet as forest deer, 
We'll drive them back as tame.' — 



XVIII 

*' Bearing before them, in their course, 
The relics of the archer force, 
Like wave with crest of sparkling foam^ 
Right onward did Clan-Alpine come. 
5 Above the tide, each broadsword bright 
Was brandishing like beam of light,' 

Each targe was dark below ; 
And with the ocean's mighty swing, 
When heaving to the tempest's wing, 
10 They hurl' d them on the foe. 

I heard the lance's shivering crash. 
As when the whirlwind rends the ash ; 
I heard the broadsword's deadly clang, 
As if an hundred anvils rang ! 
16 But Moray wheel'd his rearward rank 



236 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Of horsemen on Clan-Alpine's flank, 
— 'My banner-man, advance! 
I se^' ^e cried, 'their column shake. — 
Now, gmxiints! for your ladies' sake, 

Upon them wifch the lance!' — 2% 

The horsemen dash'd among the rout. 

As deer break through the broom ; 
Their steeds are stout, their swords are out, 

They soon make lightsome room. 
Clan-Alpine's best are backward borne-^ 25 

Where, where was Eoderick then! 
Ono blast upon his bugle -horn 
Were worth a thousand men. 
And refluent through the pass of fear 

The battle's tide was pour'd; 30 

■ Vanish'd the Saxon's struggling spear, 
Vanish'd the mountain-sword. 
As Bracklinn's chasm^, so black and steep, 

Eeceives her roaring linn, 
As the dark caverns of the deep as 

Suck the wild whirlpool in. 
So did the deep and darksome pass 
Devour the battle's mingled mass: 
None linger now upon tlie plain. 
Save those who ne'er shall fight again. M) 



XIX 



a 



Now westward rolls the battle's din, 
That deep and doubling pass within, 



CANTO SIXTH 237 

— Minstrel, away ! the work of fate 

Is bearing on! its issue wait, 
5 Where the rude Trosachs' dread defile 

Opens on Katrine's lake and isle. — 

Grey Benvenue I soon repass 'd. 

Loch Katrine lay beneath me cast. 

The sun is set, — the clouds are met, 
10 The lowering scowl of heaven 

An inkv hue of livid blue 

«/ 

To the deep lake has given ; 

Strange gusts of wind from mountain-glen 

Swept o'er the lake, then snnk agen. 
15 I heeded not the eddying surge. 

Mine eye but saw the Trosachs' gorge. 

Mine ear but heard the sullen sound. 

Which like an earthquake shook the ground, 

And spoke the stern and desperate strife 
20 That parts not but with parting life. 

Seeming, to minstrel ear, to toll 

The dirge of many a passing soul. 

Nearer it comes — the dim-wood glen 

The martial flood disgorged agen, 
25 But not in mingled tide ; 

The plaided warriors of the ISTorth 

High on the mountain thunder forth 
And overhang its side; 

While by the lake below appears 
30 The dark'ning cloud of Saxon spears. 

At weary bay each shatter 'd band. 

Eyeing their foemen, sternly stand; 



238 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Their banners stream like tatter 'd sail, 

That flings its fragments to the gale, 

And broken arms and disarray m 

Mark'd the fell havoc of the day. 



XX 



^'Viewing the mountain's ridge askance. 
The Saxon stood in sullen trance, 
Till Moray pointed with his lance, 

And cried — 'Behold yon isle! — 
See! none are left to guard its strand, 5 

But women weak, that waging the hand: 
'Tis there of yore the robber band 

Their booty wont to pile ; — 
My purse, with bonnet-pieces store, 
To him will swim a bow-shot o'er, lo 

And loose a shallop from the shore. 
Lightly we'll tam.e the war-wolf then. 
Lords of his mate, and brood, and den. ' 
Forth from the ranks a spearman sprung. 
On earth his casque and corselet rung, 15 

He plunged him in the wave: — 
All saw the deed — the purpose knew, 
And to their clamours Benyenue 

A mingled echo gave ; 
The Saxons shout, their mate to cheer^ so 

The helpless females scream for fear, 
And yells for rage the mountaineer. 



CANTO SIXTH 239 

'Twas then, as by the outcry riven, 

Pour'd down at once the lowering heaven; 
25 A whirlwind swept Loch Katrine's breast, 

Her billows rear'd their snowy crest. 

Well for the swimmer swell 'd they high, 

To mar the Highland marksman's eye; 

For round him shower 'd, 'mid rain and hail, 
20 The vengeful arrows of the Gael.^- 

In vain — ^He nears the isle — and lo! 

His hand is on a shallop's bow. 

— Just then a flash of lightning came. 

It tinged the waves and strand with flame;— 
35 I mark'd Duncraggan's widow'd dame. 

Behind an oak I saw her stand, 

A naked dirk gleam'd in her hand: — 

It dark.en'd, — but, amid the moan 

Of waves, I heard a dying groan; — 
^0 Another flash! — ^the spearman floats 

A weltering corse beside the boats. 

And the stern matron o'er him stood. 

Her hand and dagger streaming blood. 



XXI 

** 'Revenge! revenge!' the Saxons cried. 

The Gaels' exulting shout replied. 

Despite the elemental rage. 

Again they hurried to engage; 

But, ere they closed in desperate fightj 



240 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Bloody with spurring came a knight, 

Sprung from his horse, and, from a crag, 

Waved 'twixt the hosts a milk-white flag. 

Clarion and trumpet by his side 

Rung forth a truce-note high and wide, i^ 

While, in the Monarch's name, afar 

An herald's voice forbade the war. 

For Bothwell's lord, and Eoderick bold, 

Were both, he said, in captive hold." 

— But here the lay made sudden stand, is 

The harp escaped the Minstrel's hand!-— 

Oft had he stolen a glance, to spy 

How Eoderick brook'd his minstrelsy: 

At first, the Chieftain, to the chime, 

With lifted hand, kept feeble time ; so 

That motion ceased, — yet feeling strong 

Varied his look as changed the song ; 

At length, no more his deafen'd ear 

The minstrel melody can hear; 

His face grows sharp, — his hands are clench'd, 25 

As if some, pang his heart -s^:.ings wrench 'd; 

Set are his teeth, his fading eye 

Is sternly fix'd on vacancy; 

Thus, motionless, and moanless, drew 

His parting breath, stout Eoderick Dhu!— 9$ 

Old Allan-bane look'd on aghast. 

While grim and still his spirit pass'd; 

But when he saw that life was fled, 

He pour'd his wailing o'er the dead. 



CANTO SIXTH , 241 

XXII 

LAME>s^T 

'*And art thou cold and lowly laid, 
Thy foeman's dread, thy people's aid, 
Breadalbane's boast. Clan- Alpine's shade! 
For thee shall none a requiem say? . 
s — For thee, — who loved the minstrel's lay. 
For thee, of Both well's house the stay, 
The shelter of her exiled line. 
E'en in this prison-house of thine 
- I'll wail for Alpine's honour 'd Pine! 

10 ''What groans shall yonder valleys fill! 

What shrieks of grief shall rend yon hill! 

What tears of burning rage shall thrill. 

When mourns thy tribe thy battles done, 

Thy fall before the race was won, 
15 Thy sword ungirt ere set of sun! 

There breathes not clansman of thy line, 

But would have given his life for thine.—- 

woe for Alpine's honour 'd Pine! 

"Sad was thy lot on mortal stage! — 
20 The captive thrush may brook the cage, 

The prison 'd eagle dies for rage. 

Brave spirit, do not scorn my strain! 

And, when its notes awake again. 

Even she, so long beloved in vain, 
25 Shall with my harp her voice combine. 



^42 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

And mix her woe and tears with mine, 
To wail Clan-Alpine's honour 'd Pine."— 



XXIII 

Ellen, the while, with bursting heart, 

Remain'd in lordly bower apart, 

Where play'd, with many colour'd gleamSs 

Through storied pane the rising beams. 

In vain on gilded roof they fall, « 

And lighten'd up a tapestried wall. 

And for her use a menial train 

A rich collation spread in vain. 

The banquet proud, the chamber gay, 

Scarce drew one curious glance astray; ID 

Or if she look'd, 'twas but to say, 

With better omen dawn'd the day 

In that lone isle, where waved on high 

The dun-deer's hide for canopy; 

Where oft her noble father shared iS 

The simple meal her care prepared. 

While Lufra, crouching by her side, 

Her station claim'd with jealous pride, 

And Douglas, bent on woodland game, 

Spoke of the chase to Malcolm Gr^me, 2D 

Whose answer, oft at random made. 

The wandering of his thoughts betray'd.— 

Those who such simple joys have known. 

Are taught to prize them when they're gone. 



CANTO SIXTH 24: 

25 But sudden, see, she lifts her head! 

The window seeks with cautious tread. 

What distant music has the power 

To win her in this woeful hour ! 

'Twas from a turret that o'erhung 
30 Her latticed bower, the strain was sung, 

XXIV 

LAY OP THE IMPEISOI^FD HUNTSMAN 

"My hawk is tired of perch and hood, 

My idle greyhound loathes his food, 

My horse is weary of his stall, 

And I am sick of captive thrall. 
5 I wish I were as I have been, 

Hunting the hart in forest green, 

"With bended bow and bloodhound free, 

For that's the life is meet for me. 

I hate to learn the ebb of time, 
10 From yon dull steeple'? drowsy chime. 

Or mark it as the sunbeams crawl, 

Inch after inch, along the wall. 

The lark was wont my matins ring, 

The sable rook my vespers sing ; 
15 These towers, although a king's they be, 

Have not a hall of joy for me. 

No more at dawning morn I rise. 

And sun myself in Ellen's eyes. 

Drive the fleet deer the forest through, 
20 And homeward wend with evening dew ; 



244 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

A blithesome welcome blithely meet, 
And lay my trophies at her feet, 
While fled the eve on wing of glee, — 
That life is lost to love and me!" 

XXV 

The heart-sick lay was hardly said, 

The listener had not turn'd her head. 

It trickled still, the starting tear, 

When light a footstep struck her ear. 

And Snowdoun's graceful knight was near. s 

She turn'd the hastier, lest again 

The prisoner should renew his strain. 

"0 welcome, brave. Fitz- James!" she said> 

''How may an almost orphan maid 

Pay the deep debt" — "0 say not so! , if 

To me no gratitude you owe. 

Not mine, alas ! the boon to give. 

And bid thy noble father live ; 

I can but be thy guide, sweet maid, 

With Scotland's King thy suit to aid. is 

No tyrant he, though ire and pride 

May lay his better mood aside. 

Come, Ellen, come ! 'tis more than time, 

He holds his court at morning prime." 

With beating heart, and bosom wrung, «o 

As to a brother's arm she clung. 

Gently he dried the' falling tear. 

And gently whisper 'd hope and cheer; 



CANTO SIXTH 245 

Her faltering steps, half led, half staid, 
25 Through gallery fair, and high arcade. 
Till, at his touch, its wings of pride 
A portal arch unfolded wide. 

XXVI 

Within 'twas brilliant all and light, 

A thronging scene of figures bright; 

It glow'd on Ellen's dazzled sight, 

As when the setting sun has given 
5 Ten thousand hues to summer even, 

And from their tissue, fancy frames 

Aerial knights and fairy dames. 

Still by Fitz- James her footing staid; 

A few faint steps she forward made, 
10 Then slow her drooping head she raised. 

And fearful round the presence gazed ; 

For him she sought, who own'd this state. 

The dreaded Prince whose will was fate !~ 

She gazed on many a princely port, 
15 Might well have ruled a royal court ; 

On many a splendid garb she gazed, — 

Then turned bewildered and amazed, 

For all stood bare ; and, in the room, 

Fitz -James alone wore cap and plume. 
^0 To him each lady's look was lent; 

On him each courtier's eye was bent; 

Midst furs and silks and jewels sheen, 

tie stood, in simple Lincoln green. 



246 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

The centre of the glittering ring, — 

And Snowdoun's Knight is Scotland's King. 25 



XXVII 

As wreath of snow, on mountain-breast, 
Slides from the rock that gave it rest, 
Poor Ellen glided from her stay. 
And at the Monarch's feet she lay; 
No word her choking voice commands, — 
She show'd the ring — she clasped her hands. 
! not a moment could he brook, ' 

The generous Prince, that suppliant look! 
Gently he raised her, — and, the while, 
Check'd with a glance the circle's smile; 
Graceful, but grave, her brow he kiss'd. 
And bade her terrors be dismiss'd: — 
"Yes, Fair; the wandering poor Fitz- James 
The fealty of Scotland claims. 
To him thy woes, thy wishes, bring; 
He will redeem his signet-ring. 
Ask nought for Douglas ;— yester even, 
His prince and he have much forgiven. 
Wrong hath he had from slanderous tongue, 
I, from his rebel kinsmen, wrong. 
We would not, to the vulgar crowd. 
Yield what they craved with clamour loud; 
Calmly we heard and judged his cause, 
Our council aided, and our laws. 



CANTO SIXTH 247 

35 I stanch'd thy father's death-feud stern, 
With Stout De Vaux and Grey Glencauri; 
And Bothwell's Lord henceforth we own 
The friend and bulwark of our Throne.— 
But, lovely infidel, how now? 

30 What clouds thy misbelieving brow? 
Lord James of Douglas, lend thine aid; 
Thou must confirm this doubting maid." 



XXVIII 

Then forth the noble Douglas sprung, 
And on his neck his daughter hung. 
The Monarch drank, that happy hour, 
The sweetest, holiest draught of Power, — 

6 When it can say, with godlike voice, 
Arise, sad Virtue, and rejoice ! 
Yet would not James the general eye 
On Nature's raptures long should pry; 
He stepp'd between — ''Nay, Douglas, nay^ 

10 Steal not my proselyte away ! 
The riddle 'tis my right to read. 
That brought this happy chance to speed. 
— Yes, Ellen, when disguised I stray 
In life's more low but happier way, 

15 'Tis under name which veils my power, 
ISTor falsely veils — for Stirling's tower 
Of yore the name of Snowdoun claims, 
And Normans call me James Fitz-James. 



248 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Thus watch I o'er insulted laws, 

Thus learn to right the injured cause." — 20 

Then, in a tone apart and low, — 

''Ah, little traitress! none must know 

What idle dream, what lighter thought, 

What vanity full dearly bought, 

Join'd to thine eye's dark witchcraft, drew -35 

My spell-bound steps to Benvenue, 

In dangerous hour, and all but gave 

Thy Monarch's life to mountain glaive!'' — 

Aloud he spoke — "Thou still dost hold 

That little talisman of gold, 30 

Pledge of my faith, Fitz- James's ring- — 

What seeks fair Ellen of the King?" 

XXIX 

Full well the conscious maiden guess 'd 

He probed the weakness of her breast ; 

But, with that consciousness, there came 

A lightening of her fears for Graeme, 

And more she deem'd the Monarch's ire s 

Kindled 'gainst him, who, for her sire 

Rebellious broadsword boldly drew ; 

And, to her generous feeling true. 

She craved the grace of Roderick Dhu. 

* 'Forbear thy suit: — the King of kings ic 

Alone can stay life's parting wings .^ 

I know his heart, I know his hand, 

Have shared his cheer, and proved his brand:— 



CANTO SIXTH 249 

My fairest earldom would 1 give 

15 To bid ClaD -Alpine's Chieftain live! — 
Hast thou no other boon to crave? 
No other captive friend to save?" 
Blushing, she turn'd her from the King. 
And to the Douglas gave the ring, 

20 As if she wish'd her sire to speak 

The suit that stain 'd her glowing cheek.— 
''N^ay, then, my pledge has lost its force, 
And stubborn justice holds her course. — 
Malcolm, come forth!" — and, at the word, 

25 Down kneel'd the Graeme to Scotland's Lord. 
"For thee, rash youth, no suppliant sues, 
From thee may Vengeance claim her dues, 
Who, nurtur'd underneath our smile, 
Hast paid our care by treacherous wile, 

30 And sought, amid thy faithful clan, 
A refuge for an outlaw 'd man. 
Dishonouring thus thy loyal name. — 

Fetters and warder for the Grseme!" 

His chain of gold the King unstrung, 

35 The links o'er Malcolm's neck he flung, 
Then gently drew the glittering band. 
And laid the clasp on Ellen's hand. 



Harp of the North, farewell ! The hills grow dark^ 
On purple peaks a deeper shade descending; 
40 In twilight copse the glow-worm lights her spark, 
The deer, half -seen, are to the covert wending. 



250 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

Eesumo thy wizard elm ! the fountain lending, 
And the wild breeze, thy wilder minstrelsy; 

Thy numbers sweet with nature's vespers blending, 
With distant echo from the fold and lea, 45 

And herd-boy's evening pipe, and hum of housing 
bee. 

Yet, once again, farewell, thou Minstrel harp! 

Yet, once again, forgive my feeble sway. 
And little reck I of the censure sharp 

May idly cavil at an idle lay. 50 

Much have I owed thy strains on life's long way, 

Through secret woes the world has never known. 
When on the weary night dawn'd wearier day. 

And bitterer was the grief devour 'd alone. 
That I o'erlived such woes. Enchantress! is thine 55 
own. 

Hark ! as my lingering footsteps slow retire. 

Some Spirit of the Air has waked thy string ! 
'Tis now a seraph bold, with touch of fire, 

'Tis now the brush of Fairy's frolic wing. 
Receding now, the dying numbers ring ^o 

Fainter and fainter down the rugged dell, 
And now the mountain breezes scarcely bring 

A wandering witch-note of the distant spell — 
^nd now, 'tis silent all! — Enchantress, fare thee 
well! 



HOTES 



CANTO FIRST 

Int. 2. Witch-elm that shades Saint Fillan's spring. 
The well or spring of St. Fillans is on the sum- 
mit of a hill near Loch Earn, some miles north- 
east of the scene of the poem. The reason why- 
Scott places the "Harp of the North' ' here is that 
St. Fillan was the favorite saint of Robert 
Bruce, and a relic of the saint had been borne 
in a shrine by a warlike abbot at the battle of 
Bannockburn. The word "witch" (more prop- 
erly spelled "wych") is connected with 
"wicker," and means "bending," "drooping." 
10. Caledon. Caledonia, poetic name for Scotland. 
I, 2. Monans rill. Scott takes the hberty of assign- 
ing a "rill" to this Scottish martyr of the fourth 
century on his own authority, unless his editors 
have been at fault in failing to discover the 
stream indicated. 
4. Glenartney s. Glen Artney or Valley of the 
Artney. The Artney is a small river northeast 
of the main scene of the poem. 
6. Benvoirlich. "Ben" is Scottish for mountain. 
Benvoirlich is near the western end of Glenart- 
ney. 
II, 16, Uam-Var. A mountain between Glenartney and 
the Braes of Doune. The name signifies "great 
den," and is derived from a rocky enclosure on 
the mountain-side, believed to have been used 
in primitive times as a toil or trap for deer. As 
told in Stanza IV a giant was fabled to have 
inhabited this den. 
Ill, 18. Linn. This word means either "waterfall" or 
"steep ravine." The latter is probably the 
meaning here. 
V, 4. Menteith. A village and district southeast of 
the lire of lakes, Loch Katrine, Loch Achray, 

251 



252 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

and Loch Vennachar, about which the main 
action of the poem moves. 
8. Lochard. Loch Ard, a small lake south of 
Loch Katrine. Ahp.rfovle. A village east of 
Loch Ard. 

10. Loch-Achray. See note on I. v. 4 

J 2. Benvenue. A mountain on the south bank of 
Loch Katrine. 

VI, 2. Cambusmore. An estate owned by Scott's 

friends, the Buchanans, on the border of the 
Braes of Doune. 

4. Benledi. A majestic mountain shutting in th© 
horizon to the north of Loch Vennachar. 

5. Bochastle's heath. The plain between Loch 
Vennachar and the river Teith. 

11. Brigg of Turk. A romantic bridge, still in 
existence, between Loch Vennachar and Loch 
Achray. 

VII, 7. Dogs of black Saint Huberfs breed. A breed 

of dogs, usually black in color, very keen of 
scent and powerful in build, were kept by the 
abbots of St. Hubert in commemoration of their 
patron saint, who was a hunter. 

VIII, 8. Whinyard. Obsolete term for sword. 

15. Trosachs. A wild and beautiful defile between 
Loch Katrine and Loch Achray. The word sig- 
nifies "rough or bristled country." 
IX, 15. Woe worth the chase. ''Woe worth" is an 

exclamation, equivalent to * 'alack!" 
X, 11. Round and around the sounds were cast. 
Notice the mimicry of the echo in the vowel 
sounds of the line. 
XI, 13, Tower . . . on Shinar's plain. The Tower of 
Babel. 
25. Dewdrops sheen. What part of speech is 
*'sheenV" Is this use of the word obsolete in 
prose? 
XII. 16. Frequent flung. * 'Frequent" is used in the 
original Latin sense (Lat. frequens) of "crowded 
together, ' ' ' 'numerous. ' ' 
XIV, 3. Unless he clinib, with footing nice. Scott 
says: "Until the present road was made 
through the romantic pass I have presumptu- 
ously attempted to ieseribe, there was no mode 
of issuing out of thi^ defile called the Trosachs, 



NOTES CANTO FIRST 253 

excepting by a sort of ladder, composed of the 
branches and roots of trees." What is the 
meaning of ' 'nice' ' here? What other meanings 
has the word had? 

XVI, 13. Highland plunderers. The clans inhabiting 
the region about Loch Katrine were in the habit 
of making incursions into the neighboring Low- 
lands to plunder and lay waste the country. 
Their warlike habits were fostered by the rug- 
ged and almost inaccessible character of the 
country, which prevented the Lowlanders from 
retaliating upon them, and enabled them also to 
resist the royal authority. 

XIX, 2. Snood. A ribbon worn by Scotch lassies, and 
upon marriage replaced by the matron's 
**curch" or cap. Plaid. A rectangular shawl- 
like garment made of the checkered cloth called 
tartan. 

XXII, 8. Cour.h was pidVd. Freshly pulled heather 

was tne most luxurious bedding known to the 
Hignlander. 
10 'Ptarmigan and heath-cock. These birds are 
^^Cc.oo of grouse, the one red, the other black. 

XXIII, 8. On the vision' d_ future bent. The gift of 

second-sight was universally believed in at this 
period in the Highlands. 
XXV, 11. Retreat in dangerous hour. **The Celtic 
chieftains, whose lives were continually ex- 
posed to peril, had usually, in the most retired 
spot of their domain, some place of retreat for 
the hour of necessity ... a tower, a cavern, or 
a rustic hut." (Scott's note in edition of 1830.) 

XXVII, 13. Target. What is the connection of this 
word with that used in archery and gun-prac- 
tice? 

XXVIII, 7. Brook to wield. "Erook" commonly 
means "endure.'* What is its exact meaning 
here? 

14. Ferragus, or Ascabart. Two giants whose 
names appear frequently in mediseval romances 
of chivalry. The first is better known as Fer- 
••an, under which name he figures in the Orlando 
Furioso of Ariosto. Ascabart plays a part in 
the old English metrical romance of Sir Bevis 
of Hampton. 



254 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

XXIX, 5. To wJiom, though more than kindred knew. 
This is a very obscure expression for Scott, who 
is usually so careful to make himself clear. The 
meaning seems to be: Ellen regarded her as a 
mother, though that was more than the actual 
kinship of the two justified (literally "knew 
how to recognize"). 
16. Knight of Snoiudoun, James Fitz-James. As 
appears later in the poem, these were not his 
true name and title, though he was entitled to 
bear them. 

XZX, 21. ... a harp unseen 

Filled up the symphony between. 
In modern Scotland the bag-pipe has altogether 
taken the place of the harp. A writer of the 
sixteenth century says: "They (the High- 
landers) take great delight to deck their harps 
with silver and precious stones; the poor ones 
that cannot attain thereunto deck them with 
crystal. They sing verses prettily compound 
(i. e., composed) containing for the most part 
praises of valiant men." 

XXXI, 15. Pibroch. (Pronounced pee- brock.) A wild 

tumultuous tune played on the bag-pipes in the 
onset of battle. 
19. Bittern. A wading bird, allied to the heron, 

XXXII, 10. Reveille. As the rhyme shows, this word 
is pronounced reh-vaiVyah here. This is the 
common pronunciation everywhere except in 
the United States army, where the word is pro- 
nounced rev-a-lee\ It is the drum-beat or bugle- 
call at dawn to arouse soldiers. 

CANTO SECOND 

I, 1. Black-cock. See note to I. xxii. 1. 
7. Minstrel grey. Until well on in the eighteenth 
century it was customary for Highland chief 
tains to keep in their service a bard, whose chiei 
duty it was to sing the exploits of the ancestors 
of the line. 
V 4 Lead forth his fleet. What kind of figure is con- 
tained in the word "fleet" as applied to the 
flock of ducks? 
ril, 18. Harp, which erst Saint Modan swayed. St. 
Modan was not a harper, as Scott elsewhere 



NOTES CANTO SECOND 255 

ingenuously confesses, adding, however, that 
'*Saint Dunstan certainly did play upon that in- 
strument. " 
^III, 8. WaiVd loud through BothwelVs bannered 
hall, 
Ere Douglasses to ruin driven, 
Were exiled from their native heaven. 
The minstrel tries to account for the strange 
way in which his harp gives back mournful 
sounds instead of the joyous ones he is trying to 
evoke, by calling to Ellen's mind two other 
occasions when it behaved similarly. One of 
these was when it foreboded the death of Ellen's 
mother ; the other when it foreboded the exile 
of the Douglasses during the minority of James 
V. For particulars, see the introduction on 
the historical setting of the poem. BotliAvell 
castle is on the Clyde, a few miles from Glas- 
gow. 

IX, 6. From Tweed to Spey. The Tweed is in the 

extreme southern part, the Spey in the northern 
part, of Scotland. 

X, 16. Lady of the Bleeding Heart. The minstiel 

calls Ellen so because a bleeding heart was the 
heraldic emblem of the Douglas family. 

XI, 6. Strathspey. * A lively dance, named from the 

district of Strath Spey, in the north of Scotland. 
It resembled the reel, but was slower. 

13. Clan- Alpine' s pride. Clan Alpine was the col- 
lective name of the followers of Roderick Dhu, 
who figures later in the poem as Ellen's rejected 
suitor and the enemy of the mysterious "Knight 
of Snowdoun" who has just taken his departure 
from the island. 

16. Lennox foray. Lennox is the district south of 
Menteitii, in the Lowlands. It was the scene of 
innumerable forays and "cattle-drives." 
XII 5. In Holy-Rood a knight he slew. Holy-Eood is 
the royal castle at Edinburgh, where the court 
usually was held. It was deemed a heinous and 
desperate offense to commit an act of blood in 
the royal residence or its immediate neighbor- 
hood, since such an act was an indirect viola- 
tion of the majesty of the king, and a breaking 
of "the king's peace." It was for this offense 



256 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

that Roderick Dhu was exiled, and compeixed 
to live like an outlaw in his mountain fastness. 

11. Who else dared give. Notice how skilfully 
Scott manages to give us the relations of the 
chief characters of the poem to each other, and 
to show that Ellen's father, pursued by the 
hatred of James V, has been given the island 
shelter in Loch Katrine by Roderick Dhu who 
is about to make his appearance in the story. 

20. Full soon may dispensation sought, 

To hack Ms suit, from Borne be brought, 

A papal dispensation was necessary, because 
Ellen and Roderick Dhu were cousins. See 
next note. 

XIII, 4. All that a mother could bestow. 

To Lady Margaret's care I owe. 

Here again the poet takes the indirect way of 
making clear his point, namely that the matron 
introduced in the first canto is the mother of 
Roderick Dhu. The phrase "an orphan in the 
wild," is in apposition with the following 
phrase **her sister's child" — i. e., Ellen herself. 
From this it appears that Lady Margaret is 
Ellen's aunt, and that Roderick Dhu is, there- 
fore, Ellen's cousin. 
10. Maronnan's cell. A chapel at the eastern 
extremity of Loch Lomond, dedicated to the 
rather obscure saint here named. 

XIV, 4. Bracklinn's thundering wave. The reference 

is to a cascade made by a mountain torrent at 
the Bridge of Bracklinn, near the village of Cal- 
lender in Menteith. Notice how Scott's numer* 
ous references to places in the region where the 
poem is laid tend gradually to give us an idea 
of the richness and diversity of the landscape. 
8. Claymore. A large two-handed sword. 

XV, 3. Thy father's battle-brand, of yore 

For Tine-man forged by fairy lore, 



Did, self-unscabbarded, foreshoio 
The footstep of a secret foe. 

Some swords, especially those which had n^een 
magically forged, were heJd to possess the proi>- 



NOTES CANTO SECOND 257 

erty of drawing themselves from their scabbard 
at the approach of their owner's deadly enemy. 
This is the first vague hint which Scott gives us 
as to the real identity of the "Knight of Snow- 
doun." To throw a further glamor of romance 
about the prophetical weapon, he tel^s us that it 
was given by fairies to an ancestor of its present 
owner, namely, to Archibald, third Duke of 
Angus, called Tine-man (Loseman) because he 
always lost his men in battle, and that this 
gift was made while Archibald was in league 
with Harry Hotspur. 

17. Beltane game. The sports of May-day. 
25. Canna. Cotton grass. 

XVI. In this and the two following stanzas notice 
how skilfully description and narrative are 
woven together, and how the picture gains in 
detail and distinctness as the boats approach. 

4. Barges. What change has occurred in the use 
of this word? 

5. Glengyle . . . Brianchoil. Why does the poet 
introduce these proper names? Are they of any 
value as information? 

13. Tai'tans. See note to I. xix. 2. 

XVIII, 11. The chorus first could Allan knoiv. The 
chorus was the first part of the song which the 
harper, listening from the shore, could distinctly 
make out. 

XIX, 10. Eoderigh Vich Alpine dhu. The words 

*'vich" and *'dhu" are Gaelic, the first mean- 
ing "descendant of," the second "black ot 
swarthy." King Alpine was the half -mythical 
ancestor from whom the clan of Alpine sprung. 
The line means therefore, ''Black Roderick, de- 
scendant of Alpine." Compare II. xii. 4, where 
. Allan-bane calls the chieftain "Black Sir 
Roderick." 
12. Blooming at Beltane. See note to II. xv. 17 
above. 

18. Breadalbane. A large district in the western 
part of the county of Perth. 

XX, 1-8. Glen Fruin, Bannochar, Glen Luss, Eoss-dhu, 

Leven-glen. What, in simple language, should 
you say was the value of this array of obscure 
names in the song? 



258 THE I.ADY O}? THE LAKE 

13. The rose-hud that graces yon islands. To whom 
do the singers metaphorically refer? 

XXni, 15. Percy's Norman pennon. Captured by the 
Douglas in the raid which led to the battle of 
Otterburn, as celebrated in the old ballad of 
Chevy Chase. (Sprague.) 

22. The waned crescent. This may be taken as 
referring to some victory over the Turkish 
armies in the East, or to the defeat of Scott's 
ancestor, Sir Walter Scott of Buccleugh, who 
was defeated in an attempt to set the young 
king free from the Douglas. The shield of Sir 
Walter bor© a crescent moon. 

24. Blantyre, A priory on the banks of the Clyde 

near Bothwell castle, of which ruins still 

remain. 

XXVI, 11. Glenfinlas. A valley to the northeast of 

Loch Katrine, between Ben- An and Ben-Ledi. 

14. Royal ward. Malcolm, as a minor, was still 
under the king's guardianship. 

20. Strath-EndHck glen, A valley on the southeast 
of Loch Lomond, presumably Malcolm's home. 
XXVni, 19,21. The Meggat, the Yarrow, and the 
Ettrick are successive tributaries, tne waters 
of which eventually reach the Tweed. The 
Teviot is also a tributary of the Tweed. All 
five rivers are in the southern part of Scotland. 

XXX, 14. Links of Forth. Banks of the river Forth. 

In general the word "links" means flat or undu- 
lating stretches of sandy soil, partially covered 
with grass or heather. 

XXXI, 1. There are who have. How does this differ 

from the prose idiom? 

X.XXV, 7. ... pity Vwere 

Such cheek should feel the midnight air. 

Was there anything in the Highland character 
and training which would make these words 
seem particularly cutting? Notice how the 
insult is deepened later by the assumption oh. 
Roderick Dhu's part that Malcolm is capable of 
treachery toward Douglas and the Clan of 
Alpine. 

15. Henchman. This word is said to have been 
originally * 'haunch-man" because it was the 



NOTES CANTO THIRD 259 

duty of this retainer to stand beside his mas- 
ter's chair (at his haunches as it were) at the 
feast, in readiness to do his bidding or to defend 
him if attacked. 
XXXVI, 5. Fiery Cross. The signal for the gathering 
of the clan to war. The preparation and carry- 
ing abroad of this cross is described in the next 
canto. 

CANTO THIRD 

II, 21. Cushat dove. Better known as the ring-dove. 

IV, 3. Shivers. "Slivers" is the more common word, 

but the verb "to shiver," meaning to break in 

pieces, keeps near the original meaning. 
14. Benharrow. This mountain is near the north 

end of Loch Lomond. 
27. Strath. A wide open valley, distinguished 

from a glen, which is narrow. 

V, 14. Field-fare. A species of thrush. 

26. Virgin snood. See note to I xvi. 2. 

VII, 6. River Demon. Concerning this creature Scott 

gives the current observation: *'The River 
Demon, or River-horse, is an evil spirit, delight- 
ing to forebode and witness calamity. He fre- 
quents most Highland lakes and rivers ; and one 
of his most memorable exploits was performed 
upon the banks of Loch Vennachar : it consisted 
in the destruction of a bridal party with all its • 
attendants." The "noontide hag" was a gi- 
gantic emaciated female figure which, contrary 
to the general rule of ghostly creatures, ap- 
peared in the full blaze of noon. 
20. Ben-Shie's boding scream. The ben-shie or 
banshee was a tutelar spirit, supposed to fore- 
bode by midnight bowlings the death of a mem- 
ber of a family to which it was attached. The 
superstition is still prevalent in Ireland. 

VIII, 13. Inch-Cailliach An island in -Loch Lomond, 

used as a place of burial for several neighboring 
clans, of whom the descendants of King Alpine 
were the chief. The name means "Is*^ of 
Nuns," or "Isle of Old Women." 
IX. Notice the change in the rhyme system which 
marks the break from flowing narrative to 
solemn dramatic speech, and is continued 



260 THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

through the stanza to increase the effect of 
solemnity. 
X, 31. Coir-UrisMn, thy goblin cave. This cave and 
the pass of Beala-nam-bo were on the slopes oi 
Ben Venue, a mountain near Loch Katrine. 
See notes tu xxvi. and xxvii. below. 
XII, 5. Lanrick mead. This meadow is still pointed 
out to the traveller on the road from Loch 
Yennachar to the Trosachs. 

XIII, 1. Dun deefs hide. It was their shoes made of 
untanned deer's hide, with the hair outwards, 
which gave the Highlander's their nickname, 
''Red-shanks." 
XY, 2. Duncraggan. A village between Loch Achray 
and Loch Yennachar. 
22. Coronach. Death-song. 

XYI, 17. Correi. Scott explains this as **the hollow 
side of the hill, where game usually lies." 
18. Cumber. Trouble, perplexity. 

XYI I, 1. Stumah. The name of a dog, signifying 
''faithful." 

XIX, 10. Chapel of St. Bride. This chapel stood on 
the knoll of Strath- Ire, mentioned at the begin- 
ning of the stanza, halfway up the pass of 
Leny. Scott is singularly careful not to take 
liberties with the geography of the localities 
where his story is laid. 
17. Pole-axe. An old weapon consisting of a broad 
axe-head fastened to a long pole, with a prick 
at the back. 
XX, 3 Tombea's Mary. Tombea and Armandave are 
names of places in the vicinity of Strath-Ire. 

XXIII, 2 Bracken. Fern. 

XXI Y, 2 Balquidder. The braes of Balquidder ex- 
tended west from Loch Yoil, to the northward 
of the scene of the poem. Midnight blaze ; the 
heather on the moorlands is often set on fire by 
the shepherds in order that new herbage may 
spring up. 
10. Loch Vail, etc. This and the following 
names are of poetic value in suggesting tangibly 
the rapid passage of the runner from place to 
place. 

XXY, 22. Coir-nan-Uriskin. Scott says that this 
name, signifying '^Den of the Shaggy Men," 



NOTES CANTO FOURTH 261 

was derivef* from the mythical inhabitants of 
the place, creatures half-man and half-goat, 
resembling the satyrs of classical mythology. 

XXVI, 17. Stiil, Stillness. Can you instance other 

cases of uhe use of adjective for noun? 
32. Satyrs. See note to xxv. 22 above. 

XXVII, 6. Beal-nam-ho. The name signifies * 'Pass of 
cattle." It is described as a "most magnificent 
glade, overhung with aged birch-trees, a little 
higher up the mountain than the Coir-nan- 
Uriskin." 

14. A single page, to bear his sivord. The sword 
bearer, like the henchman and the bard, was a 
regular oflficer attached to the person of a High- 
land Chief. He was called in Gaelic *'GilHe- 
more," or sword-man. 

CANTO FOURTH 

n, 10. Braes of Doune. Doune is a village on the 
Teith, a few miles northwest of Stirling. The 
word *'brae" means slope or declivity; the 
braes of Doune stretch away east and north 
from the village. 

III, 5. Boune. An obsolete word meaning * 'pre- 

pared." 

IV, 9. Taghairm. The word means "Augury of the 

Hide." 
14. When swept our merry-men Gallangad. The 
reference is to one of the forays or "cattle- 
drives" which the Highland chiefs were fond 
of making at the expense of their neighbors. 
The situation of Gallangad is now unknown, 
but it was presumably a portion of the Lennox 
district. 

19. Kernes. The kern or cateran of the Highlands 
was a light-armed infantryman, as opposed to 
the heavy -armed "gallowglass." 

24. Scatheless, Without fear of injury, because of 
the weariness of the animal after the march. 
V, 4. Boss. The word means knob or protuberance, 
especially that in the center of a shield. What 
the boss of a cliff can be it is a little difficult to 
understand. 

20. Watchiyig while the deer is broke. The cutting 
up of the deer and allotting of the various par- 



262 THE LiLDY OF THE LAKE 

tions was technically known as the ''breaking'* 
of the deer. A certain gristly portion was 
given, by long custom, to the birds, and came 
to be known as *'the raven's bone." 

VII, 7. A spy has sought my land. Eoderick refers, 

as appears later, to the "Knight of Snowdoun' 
of Canto I. 

VIII, 1. Glaive. Sword. 

4 Sable pale. An heraldic term, applied to a 
black perpendicular stripe in a coat of arms. 

25. Stance. Station, foundation. 

X, 25. Camhus-kenneth' s fane. The ruins of Cambus- 
kenneth Abbey are still to be seen on the banks 
of the Forth near Stirling. 

XII, 2. Mavis and merle. Thrush and blackbird. 

26. Darkling was the battle tried. Scott first wrote 
"blindfold'; in place of "darkling." 

25. Pall. A rich cloth, from which mantles of 
noblemen were made. Vair. A fur much used 
for the garments of nobility in mediaeval times. 

XIII, 6. Wonn'd. An obsolete equivalent of "dwelt." 
14. Fairies' fatal green. The elves or gnomes wore 

green, and were angered when any mortal ven 
tured to wear that color. For this or some 
other reason green was held an unlucky color 
in many parts of Scotland. 
16. Thou wert christened man^. - Urgan, as appears 
later, was a mortal, who had fallen under the 
spell of the elves and lived their life, but who 
still retained some of the privileges and immu- 
nities which belonged, according to mediaeval 
belief, to all persons who had been baptized into 
the Christian church. 

XV, 32. Dunfermline. An Abbey sixteen miles north- 

west of Edinburgh. 

XVI, 13. My former guide. This is Red Murdoch, of 

whom Roderick Dhu speaks in IV. i. 

XXII, 5. The Allan and the Devan are two streams 

which descend from the hills of Perthshire into 
the lowland plain. 

XXIII, 13. From Maudlin's charge. Maudlin, as a 
proper name, is a corruption of Magdalen. The 
curious development of meaning which has 
taken place in the word should be looked out 
in the dictionary. 



NOTES CANTO FIFTH 263 



IT Peasant pitched a bar. ^Titching the bar" 
was a feat of strength like the modern "putting 
the shot." It was usually indulged in by the 
peasantry at fairs and on the village greens. 
^2. That savage groom. The mad woman refers to 
Red Murdoch, the guide. 
K.XV, 5. A stag of ten. With ten branches on his 
antlers. 



CANTO FIFTH 

III, 11. Shingles. Declivities or ''slides" of small 
broken stone. 

VI, 13. While Albany, vnth feeble hand, 

Held borrowed truncheon of command. 
After the death of James lY at Flodden Field 
the regency was held first by the mother of the 
young king, and then by the Duke of Albany. 
The latter was forced by the Estates to leave 
Scotland in 1624, and soon after the regency fell 
practically, though, not constitutionally, into 
the hands of the king's step-father, Archibald 
Douglas, Earl of Angus. See introduction on 
the historical setting of the poem. 

IX, 3. Curlew. A shore-bird, with a long curved bill. 

X, 26. Jack. A coat of mail made of leather or heavy 

padded cloth. 

XII, 6. On Bochastle the mouldering lines, etc. East of 
Lake Vennachar, in the moor of Bochastle, are 
some traces of the Roman occupation, in the 
form of mounds and intrenchments. 

XVT, 7. Mountain-cat. * 'Catamount" is the common 
name in America. 

XVII, 25. Palfrey. A saddle-horse as distinguished 

from a war-horse. 
39. Weed. Garment. The word is now restricted 
to the phrase "widow's weeds." 

XVIII, 21-28. Torry, Lendrick, Deanstown, Doune, 
Blair-Drummond, Ochtertyre, and Kier, are all 
on the Teith, between Bochastle and Stirling. 

XIX, 20. By Saint Serle. The necessities of rhyme 

compel the poet to choose a very obscure saint 
from the calendar. 
27. Postern gate. The small rear gate of a castle, 
generally used by the servants only. 



%ei THE LADY OF THE LAKE 

XXI, 10. Jennet, A small Spanish horse, originally a 

cross between native and Arabian stock. 

XXII, 3. Morricers. Morrice-dancers. The morrice or 

morris was an old dance, imported into England 
from Spain. Believed to be a corruption of 
* 'Moorish." 

5. Butts, The targets for archery practice. 

6. Bold Robin Hood and all his band. It is of 
course not meant that the renowned outlaw 
himself and his followers were there, but mas- 
queraders representing these traditional charac- 
ters. All the names that follow occur in one or 
other of the legends and ballads which gathered 
about Robin Hood's name. 

14. TJie white, i. e. , the white center of the target. 
XXIV, 2. Ladies' Rock. A hillock between the Castle 

and Gray-friar's church, from which the court 

ladies viewed the games. 
XXXII, 19. Lily laivn. A conventional phrase in old 

ballad poetry, without any very definite meaning. 

CANTO SIXTH 

II, 24. Harness. Armor and other war-gear. 

III, 18. Halberd. A weapon consisting of a battle-axe 

and pike at the end of a long staff. Brand. A 
poetical word for sword. 
V 3. Black-jack. A large drinking can of tarred or 
waxed leather. 
6. Drink upsees out. "Upsees" is a corruption of 
a Dutch Bacchanalian interjection. 

14. Cure. Parish or charge. Placket. Petticoat. 

15. Lurch. Swindle, leave in difficulty. 
XIII, 1. Prore. Poetical form of "prow. " 
XV, 9. Erne. Eagle. 

XVII. Notice how both rhyme and rhythm mirror the 
growing excitement of the conflict. 

26. As their Tinchel cows the game. The '^Tinchel" 
was a circle of hunters, surrounding a herd of 
deer and gradually closing in on them. 

XVIII, 34. Linn. The word here means waterfall. 
XXI, 13. BothwelVs lord. Douglas. See note to II. viii. 8. 

18. How Roderick brooked his minstrelsy. 
^'Brooked" is not used in its strong sense of 
* ^endured, ' ' but in the weaker one of ' 'received' ■ ; 
Wh should say colloquially **how he took it." 



APPENDIX 

(Adapted, and enlarged, from the Manual for the 
Study of English Classics^ by George L. Marsh) 

HELPS TO STUDY 

Life of Scott 

What prominent traits of Scott's character can be 
traced to his ancestors (pp. 9, 10) ? 

How did he regard the members of his clan, especially 
the chief (pp. 19, 20) ? 

What characteristic is represented in his refusal to 
learn Latin and Greek at school? 

What was his own method of obtaining .an education? 
In what did he become proficient (p. 12) ? 

How did he regard his legal studies? How did they 
benefit him in his later work? 
^ How was he first interested in ballad-writing? 

Tell of the composition, publication, and popularity of 
his first poems (pp. 20 ff.). 

In what business venture did he become involved, and 
what was the final outcome? What defect in his charac- 
ter is it charged that his business relations brought to 
light (pp. 24, 25) ? 

Tell of the composition of his novels. Why were they 
published incognito? 

What can you say of his last years and his struggle to 
pay off the debts incurred by his connection with Ballan- 
tyne? 

1^65 



266 APPENDIX 

Scott and the Romantic Movement 

What is meant by the ^ ^ Romantic Movement ' ^ ? What 
four men were chiefly instrumental in bringing about 
this revolution in English poetry (p. 40) ? 

What was the influence of Scott's poetry on the age 
in comparison with that of his chief contemporaries? 
Give the reasons (p. 41). 

What were the distinguishing qualities of the litera- 
ture of the eighteenth century? Illustrate these by ex- 
amples from Pope or any other poet that you choose from 
that period, and put them into contrast with the qualities 
of the romantic poets. Does Scott's style differ greatly 
from that of the poets of the preceding century? 

The Lady of the Lake — Construction 

Is there anything that has taken place before the open- 
ing of the poem that has to be understood for a thorough 
appreciation of the story (p. 46) ? How are the previous 
fortunes of the Douglas family related (p. 98) ? 

What purpose in the plot does the Minstrel serve 
throughout^ 

What do you think of the opening? 

Does the chase serve merely to furnish an opportunity 
for the description? 

Is the action rapid or slow? How is it often retarded? 

For Avhat are the songs introduced? 

Note the transition from stanza X to XI (p. 66) ; from 
XVI to XVII; from XXIV to XXV (p. 144) ; and many 
others. 

How many cases of concealed identity are there in the 
poem? Does this turning of the plot on mistaken iden- 
tity make it seem unreal? Show in each case where the 
identity is exposed and where hints have been given be- 
forehand of the real identity. 



APPENDIX 267 

Is there any intimation of the identity of Ellen and her 
father in lines 6-8, page 81; lines 11-22, page 87? 

What is the purpose of Fitz- James ^s dream (p. 86)1 

What is the first hint of Ellen ^s love story and the, 
name of her lover (pp. 74, 92) ? 

When is Koderick Dhu first mentioned (p. 96) ? In 
what light? 

Where are the relations of Ellen with Roderick and 
with Malcolm further discussed (p. 98)? 

To whom is the reference in lines 19-21, page 116? 

What action does the struggle between Roderick and 
Malcolm motive? 

How does Canto Third advance the plot? What is its 
poetical value (p. 56) 1 

What purpose does Brian serve? 

Does the prophecy (p. 157) heighten the dramatic 
effect of the following scene (see p. 196) ? 

For what are lines 5-15, page 157, a preparation (p. 
168)? 

What is the purpose of the Ballad of Alice Brand (pp. 
162 ff.) ? 

What other result of Scott ^s early interest in ballad 
literature can you point out in The Lady of the Lalce? 

Does the warning of James by the song of mad Blanche 
seem improbable? 

What is the purpose of the long speeches between 
James and Roderick in the dramatic scene following Rod- 
erick 's calling of his men? 

Does the combat between James and Roderick (pp. 
198, 199) seem a real fight? 

Why was Roderick preserved to die in the castle at 
Stirling? 

Are lines 15-25, page 203, an artistic preparation for 
the following scene? 



268 



APPENDIX 



How do the games in the Castle park hasten the plot 
to its end? 

How is the fight between Clan-Alpine and the Earl of 
Mar described? 

How much of the action takes place outside the poem 
and is related? 

Note the use of the supernatural (p. 239). Does it 
seem impressive? 

Is the conclusion sustained and dramatic? 

Description 

Are the nature descriptions given for scenic effect, or 
do thej serve as a background and setting for the story ? 

Does Scott employ incidents of plot for the sake of 
di-agging in descriptions? 

Which is the best in the poem: nature description, plot 
construction, character deseription, or the portrayal of 
old life and customs? 

Is the descriptive language suggestive? 

Are the landscape scenes given minutely, or are they 
drawn broadly, with a free hand? 

Does Scott keep closely to the geography of the region 
of his tale (see map, p. 5, and note, p. 260) ? 

Perry Pictures 912-17 (from Landseer ^s paintings of 
deer) and 1511 (Ben Lomond) may be used in illustration 
of The Lady of the Lake. 

Characters 

Are the characters distinctly drawn — do they seem real 
people of flesh and blood? 

How is Ellen's character displayed? 

Do you feel any sympathy for Roderick Dhu? Does 
your impression of his character improve (pp. 96, 98, 99, 
182, 188, 195, and 241) ? ' 



APPENDIX 269 

Was Douglas an historical character? 

Is the character of James Fitz-James true to James V 
of Scotland? 

Is Allan bane representative of the place in the ancient 
Scottish clan which the minstrel had? 

THEME SUBJECTS 

1. Scott ^s boyhood (with emphasis on the cultiva- 
tion of characteristics displayed in his poems; pp. 10-12). 

2. Scott as a landed proprietor (pp. 27-33). This 
may well take the form of an imaginary visit to Abbots- 
ford. 

3. Scott in business (pp. 23-25, 34-36), Compare 
his struggle against debt with Mark Twain 'g. 

4. The historical setting of The Lady of the Lake 
(pp. 46-48). 

5. A visit to the scene of The Lady of the Lake. 

6. Summary of the action; as a whole, or by parts 
(cantos or other logical divisions). 

7. Character sketches of Fitz-James, Roderick Dhu, 
Ellen, Malcolm, Douglas. 

8. Highland customs reflected in the poem (pp. 129 
ff., 253, 254, etc.). 

9. The use of the Minstrel in the poem. 

10. The interpolated lyrics — what purposes do they, 
respectively, serve? 

11. Descriptions of scenes resembling, in one way or 
another, attractive scenes depicted in The Lady of the 
Lake. 

12. Soldier life in Stirling Castle (pp. 219 ff.). 

13. Contrast feudal warfare (especially as shown on 
pp. 81, 182) with modern warfare. 

14. Show, by selected passages, Scott's veneration for 
the ideals of feudalism (pp. 81, 228, etc.). 



270 APPENDIX 

15. Eewrite the scene of the combat between Roderick 
and Fitz- James (pp. 198-200) in the prose style of Scott 
as in the tournament scene in Ivanlioe. 



SELECTIONS FOR CLASS READING 

1. The chase (pp. 60-65). 

2. The Trosachs (pp. 66-68). 
^ Ellen (pp. 72-74). 

4. Ellen ^s song (pp. 83-85). 

5. Roderick's arrival (pp. 100-105). 

6. Roderick's, proposal (pp. 113-118). 

7. The consecration of the bloody cross (pp. 128-32). 

8. The summoning of the elan (pp. 132-35). 

9. The Coronach (pp. 136, 137). 

10. Roderick overhears Ellen's song (pp. 147-50). 

11. The ballad of Alice Brand (pp. 162-67). 

12. Fitz-James and the mad woman (pp. 172-78). 

13. The hospitality of a Highlander (pp. 180-83). 

14. The hidden army (pp. 188-92). 

15. The combat (pp. 195-200). 

16. Douglas at the games (pp. 207-11). 
^17^j The speech of Douglas (pp. 212, 213). 

18. The Battle of Beal an Duine (pp. 232-40). 

19. Fitz-James reveals himself to Ellen (pp. 243-49) 



CLASSES OF POETEY 

It is important for the student of poetry to know the 
principal classes into which poems are divided. The fol- 
lowing brief explanations do not pretend to be exhaustive, 
but they should be of practical aid. It must be remem- 
bered that a long poem is sometimes not very definitely 
of any one class, but combines characteristics of different 
classes. 

Narrative poetry, like narrative prose, aims primarily to 
tell a story. 

The epic is the most pretentious kind of narrative 
poetry; it tells in serious verse of the great deeds of a 
]3opular hero. The Iliad, the Aeneid, Beowulf, Paradise 
Lost are important epics. The Idylls of the King is in 
the main an epic poem. 

The metrical romance is a rather long story in verse, of 
a less exalted and heroic character than the true epic. 
Scott 's Lady of the Lalce is a familiar example. 

The verse tale is shorter and likely to be less dignified 
and serious than the metrical romance. The stories in 
Chaucer ^s Canterbury Tales, or Burns 's Tam 'Shanter, 
may serve as examples. 

The ballad is a narrative poem, usually rather short 
and in such form as to be sung. It is distinguished from 
a song by the fact that it tells a story. Popular or folic 
ballads are ancient and of unknown authorship — handed 
down by word of mouth and varied by the transmitters. 
Artistic ballads are imitations, by known poets, of tra- 
ditional ballads. 

Descriptive and reflective poems have characteristics 
sufficiently indicated by the adjectives in italics. 

271 



272 APPENDIX 

The pastoral is a particular kind of descriptive and nar- 
rative poem in which the scene is laid in the country. 

The idyll is, according to the etymology of its name, a 
*' little picture. ^^" Tennyson ^s Idylls of the King are 
rather more epic than idyllic in the stirict sense of the 
term. The terms idyll and pastoral are not definitely 
discriminated. 

Lyric poetry is poetry expressing personal feeling or 
emotion and in tuneful form. Songs are the simplest ex- 
amples of lyric poetry; formal odes, such as Wordsworth ^s 
on ^^Immortality,'' the most elaborate. A lyric does 
not primarily tell a story, but it may imply one or refer 
to one. 

The elegy is a reflective lyric prompted by the death of 
some one. Tennyson's In Memoriam is a collection of 
elegiac lyrics. 

A hymn is a religious lyric. 

Dramatic poetry presents human life in speech and 
action. 

A tragedy is a serious drama which presents its hero 
in a losing struggle ending in his death. 

A comedy does not end in death, and is usually cheer- 
ful and humorous. 

The dramatic monologue is a poem in which a dramatic 
situation is presented, or perhaps a story is told, by one 
speaker. 

Satire in verse aims to correct abuses, to ridicule per- 
sons, etc. 

Didactic poetry has the purpose of teaching. 



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